Over the years, several friends and family, upon hearing that we’d be traveling through Mississippi, have suggested we check out the Natchez Trace. We did a cursory Google search and discovered that Natchez Trace was mostly just a scenic highway.

It looked beautiful, but there was very little wilderness trail to hike. And it’s kind of in the wrong direction for our usual travel plans, starting in the southwest at Natchez on the Mississippi River and heading 444 miles North Northeast to the outskirts of Nashville. So we’ve taken a pass… up until now.

We’re heading west for sure, on a grand loop that will include Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, South Dakota, Illinois, Michigan and New England.

But we have no time constraints this time, so we looked at Natchez Trace again. It has three decent first-come first-served campgrounds, lots of interesting historical attractions, and five linear hikes, totaling 61 miles. We’ll have to hike them in-and-out, which will total 122 miles for us. Sounds like this could be fun!

The parkway was established as part of the National Park system in 1938, but wasn’t completed until 2005. It follows an ancient travel and trading corridor that dates back thousands of years. But it also covers more recent history, including the dispossession of the Natchez, Chickasaw and Choctaw of their native lands, the spread of slavery throughout the south, the War of 1812, the Civil War, Jim Crow culture, the Blues, and much more. We think we’ll take at least 2 weeks or so to explore, camp and hike our way up the entire 444 miles of the scenic parkway.

We’ll take lots of pictures and report back on our Natchez Adventure in “Part Two”.