Mississippi Days

Chris and I had a free Saturday, and decided to explore some nearby Mississippi points of interest.  I have wanted to go see the Ruins of Windsor for as long as I can remember.  But it wasn't until about a year ago that I realized how close the site is (in Port Gibson) from Jackson.  After seeing the ruins, I think it is worth it even if you have to drive for hours.  The pictures below absolutely fail to do the site justice.

Fun Facts About the Ruins:

1.  The mansion was built in 1861, and the owner died a few weeks after moving in.
2.  It burned down in 1890, after a guest was careless with a cigarette.  The fire destroyed all plans and sketches of the house.
3.  Then, in 1991, a diary of a Union civil war soldier was discovered in an attic in Ohio.  In his diary, the soldier had sketched Windsor after walking by it on his way to the Battle of Port Gibson.  This is the only known sketch of the house by someone who actually saw it before it burned.
4. Elizabeth Taylor filmed a famous love scene amid the ruins in the film Raintree County.
5.  Mark Twain was one of the famous people who stayed at Windsor before it burned down.

While we were in the area, we had to stop in Port Gibson and see this church.  It was built in 1827 and, honestly, have you ever seen a steeple even close to this one?

We then stopped by the "ghost town" of Rodney, Mississippi.  It isn't actually a ghost town, because there are a few families that still live there.  But it was abolished in the 1930's by the governor, and is no longer an actual town.  It's gravel roads and a few abandoned buildings, for the most part.  Interestingly, there was the old church standing there, with the door wide open.  So naturally Chris and I had to explore.  You can still clearly see a cannonball from the Civil War in the side of the church.  The church itself was beautiful, but there was something so tragic about it being just left to ruin.  Birds had made nests inside the church, windows were broken... but there was still a stack of hymnals on two of the pews, and the piano was still inside.  There was something so holy and beautiful about the deserted country church.

Fun Facts About Rodney:
1.  It was almost our state capitol.  In fact, I think it only lost out to Jackson by 3 votes.
2.  President Zachary Taylor was in Rodney when he found out he won the presidency.
3.  Rodney used to be one of the epicenters of culture in the entire South.
4.  The Mississippi River once ran right through (or right by) Rodney, but then it developed a sandbar that caused it to flow away from the town, effectively signing the town's death warrant.

Chris hiking up the bluff towards the cemetery.  

Another abandoned church nearby.

Chris standing by the old drugstore, and behind that, the old commercial building of Rodney.  

Like the Ruins, these photos do not do the beauty of the area justice. There was an abandoned cemetery behind the church.  It, too, was beautiful in an untamed, natural way, but something in me was saddened by the lack of care given to the graves.  The tombstones are crumbling and sliding down into a ravine, and it looks like nothing has been done to attempt to stop it.  We found graves dating back to the 1820's.

On the way home, we stopped for lunch at The Old Country Store restaurant in Lorman, MS (near Alcorn State).  Please, if you are ever nearby, do yourself a favor and try Mr. D's fried chicken.  I am still dreaming about it.  He says his secret to good fried chicken is that the chicken he cooks has never been frozen.  He buys local chicken straight from market, and it goes from market to plate without ever being frozen.  Whatever he does, it works.

There is so much to see and do in Mississippi once you get beneath the surface.  That is the goal Chris and I have set for ourselves while we live in Mississippi.  It's extremely embarrassing to me that I have traveled more internationally than I have in my own state.  It is now time to explore Mississippi and the South in general.  That isn't to say I don't want to travel more internationally.  But for the next few years I want to see places nearby, and for "exotic" trips, places like the Grand Canyon, Washington redwoods, or Niagara Falls, instead of more far-off places.  Next on the Mississippi list? The Blues museum in Clarksdale!