Moto Giro degli Stati Uniti: Natchez Trace, Vicksburg and Shreveport?

Monday August 17 Lunedi 17 Agosto
OK, not really Shreveport but the suburb to the east Bossier City. That is where we are spending the night tonight. We started out riding north from Natchez to the start of the Natchez Trace Parkway. The parkway roughly follows the original Natchez Trace which was an animal trail enlarged by the native Americans, then enlarged some more by the early US government to establish a route from Nashville to the Mississippi river. It was also where Lewis of Lewis and Clark fame died. Suicide or murder, nobody knows for sure. But today it is a beautiful road rivaling the Blue Ridge Parkway and with no commercial traffic. We could only see a small portion of it as it goes northeast and we are going west. After the trace we went to Vicksburg home of the famous civil war battle that turned the tide of the war. The battlefield is now a national park which we visited. There are monuments for each of the companies of both sides placed where the companies were positioned. There are a lot of monuments. It seems that Illinois provided the largest amount of soldiers for the Union side as the Illinois monuments outnumbered every other state. Illinois also had the biggest monument, almost a cathedral. Every so often we would arrive at a point where we could see enough of the battle area to envision how it must have been. It was interesting to stand where history was made but also depressing to think of all the personal tragedies. There is also a resurrected armored gunboat, the Cairo, located in the park. When in use it weighed 550 tons. It also seems that it was debatable whether gun battles or exploding steam drums was the most danger to the crew. We learned a lot of history today as we have also done at other stops on this trip. When we finally left we went west and Clint & Charleen went north. I want to stop in the Dallas area to look at a machine for changing tires. This will take a couple of hours and does not fit into the planned schedule. So we will meet up later in the week. I also want to stop by Archer City in Texas. This is the city where "The Last Picture Show" was filmed and is also the home town of Larry McMurtry who wrote the book the movie was based on as well as the book Lonesome Dove which was made into a 6 hour tv special. It was a rundown town in 1971 when the movie was made so it will be interesting to see if it looks the same. Surprising enough we encountered no real rain today. 275 miles.

Oggi e' cominciato a Natchez, Mississippi. C'e una strada chiamato Natchez Trace. Questa strada segue una strada storica con il stesso nome che era usata dagl'indiani e animali molti anni fa. Non si permettono i camion su questa strada cosi e' in condizione buona e anche e' piu' sicuro per le moto. Dopo abbiamo fermato al parco nazionale alla citta di Vicksburg. Qui c'era una battaglia famosa durante la guerra fra gli stati nel 1836. E' molto triste quando si pensa della gente perso nelle guerre. Mi sembra che gl'umani essendi non hanno imparato molto dopo tante mille anni. Dopo il campo da battaglia io e Linda andati ovest quando Clint e Charleen hanno guidato nord. Voglio vedere un'aparecchio per cambiare pneumatici in Dallas, Texas. Ci incontreremo ancora mercoledi. 270 miglia