About midnight, I arose from a “nap” and shaped the sourdough bread dough into a “ball” and shifted it to a parchment paper lined Dutch oven for its final rise. After a few more hours of sleep, Kay and I got up (4 am) and I put the bread into a preheated oven to bake. And then I mixed dough for sourdough Lemony Blueberry Muffins which went into the oven after the bread finished baking. Kitchen cleanup followed, and we prepped for departure. 

We left the house at 7:45 am, driving east then south some five and a half hours to the Southern Terminus,  Milepost (MP) “0” of the Natchez Trace Parkway (NTP).

Traveling the Natchez Trace Parkway has been a bucket list item for several years. The following describes some of the sights along the way.

From 1818-1845, Elizabeth Female Academy stood on the southern end of the Old Trace. It was the first female institution of higher learning charted by the state of Mississippi. It was one of the first institutions to offer college degrees to women in Mississippi and one of the first female colleges in the country. The ruins, at MP 5.1, are shown here.

The Mount Locust Historic House (c. 1784) at MP 15.5 is one of the oldest structures in Mississippi. The house sits atop a tract of land just off the Natchez Trace that was originally used for farming by the home’s original owners William and Paulina Ferguson. The grounds of Mount Locust include an enslaved person cemetery, the Ferguson-Chamberlain cemetery, and a brick kiln site, where slaves made the bricks to build parts of the Ferguson-Chamberlain home.

Constructed from a natural hill nearly 1,000 years ago, Mangum Mound, MP 45.7 is still a sacred site for today’s American Indian tribes.

We arrived at Kosciusko, Mississippi (MP 160) for overnighting at Maple Terrace Inn B&B. Restaurants were far and few between, “forcing” us to eat at McDonald’s. The B&B was a stately old house, and we stayed in the Bombay room. We were tired and absent enough sleep the last couple of nights, sleep came early (before 8:30 pm for me). Breakfast consisted of a DIY continental breakfast featuring frozen breakfast sandwiches and a bit of fruit—oh, of course coffee. Not what we expected.