On to Alabama - Mississippi

Candy for the road.  It's a long drive.

All that candy reminds me of something.  I've been feeling as though I must be gaining weight with all those chile rellenos, beignets and the odd milkshake, not to mention M&M's while driving, and I feel bulky.  But according to a scale in the fitness room of a recent hotel, I'm actually a couple of pounds lighter.  Then I weighed myself again after only half an hour of exercise and I'd lost nearly 2 pounds of sweat...in half an hour!  No wonder I feel bulky:  it's hot and I'm keeping well hydrated, so I'm probably carrying around several quarts of water at any given moment.  Just thought you'd like to know that.  :-)

Another Tripod.  (And if you'd read the books you'd think these is cool as we do.)

Our first view of the Gulf.

This is Jefferson Davis' final home, Beauvoir.  We toured it.  Beauvoir, which means "beautiful view", sustained a lot of damage in Hurricane Katrina, and has been nicely restored.  Workers are busy on the grounds putting in Varina Davis' original 1-acre rose garden.

Hurricane Katrina was the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States.  Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall. At least 1,833 people died in the hurricane and subsequent floods.

The entrance hall.  These are the home's original paint colors.

 I want this pink chair for Hailey!

I just read somewhere recently about dresser sets like this one, which contained 7 or more pieces, and I wonder what they all are.  Pitcher, basin and chamber-pot I know, but what about the rest?

  Jefferson Davis.

Jefferson Finis Davis (June 3, 1808 – December 6, 1889) was an American statesman and leader of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, serving as President of the Confederate States of America for its entire history, from 1861 to 1865.  (Note: We learned that he was named "Finis", French for "the end", because his mother gave birth to him at age 47!  Jefferson was not amused and never used his middle name.)

Davis was born in Kentucky to Samuel and Jane (Cook) Davis. After attending Transylvania University, Davis graduated from West Point and fought in the Mexican–American War as the colonel of a volunteer regiment named the Mississippi Rifles. He served as the United States Secretary of War under Democratic President Franklin Pierce. Both before and after his time in the Pierce administration, he served as a Democratic U.S. senator representing the state of Mississippi. As a senator, he argued against secession, but did agree that each state was sovereign and had an unquestionable right to secede from the Union.

On February 9, 1861, after Davis resigned from the United States Senate on the eve of the Civil War, he was selected to be the provisional President of the Confederate States of America; he was elected without opposition to a six-year term that November. During his presidency, Davis took charge of the Confederate war plans but was unable to find a strategy to stop the larger, more powerful and better-organized Union. His diplomatic efforts failed to gain recognition from any foreign country, and he paid little attention to the collapsing Confederate economy, printing more and more paper money to cover the war's expenses.

Historians have criticized Davis for being a much less effective war leader than his Union counterpart Abraham Lincoln, which they attribute to Davis being overbearing, controlling, and overly meddlesome, as well as being out of touch with public opinion, and lacking support from a political party (since the Confederacy had no political parties).  His preoccupation with detail, reluctance to delegate responsibility, lack of popular appeal, feuds with powerful state governors, inability to get along with people who disagreed with him, and neglect of civil matters in favor of military ones all worked against him.  (This isn't what we heard about at Beauvoir, where we were told what a kind, generous and well-liked  man he was.) 

After Davis was captured on May 10, 1865, he was charged with treason. Although he was not tried, he was stripped of his eligibility to run for public office; Congress posthumously lifted this restriction in 1978, 89 years after his death.  (Haha!  Fat lot of good it does him then!)  While not disgraced, he was displaced in Southern affection after the war by the leading Confederate general, Robert E. Lee. However, many Southerners empathized with his defiance, refusal to accept defeat, and resistance to Reconstruction. Over time, admiration for his pride and ideals made him a Civil War hero to many Southerners, and his legacy became part of the foundation of the postwar New South.  By the late 1880s, Davis began to encourage reconciliation, telling Southerners to be loyal to the Union.

He was aided in the last decade of his life by the generosity of Sarah Anne Ellis Dorsey, a wealthy widow, who invited him to her plantation, Beauvoir, near Biloxi, Mississippi, which she eventually bequeathed to him, along with funds for his support.  This enabled him to live in some comfort with his wife until his death in 1889.  (Wikipedia)

 We've been dying to get to a beach, but we only spent a few minutes here.  It was the end of the day and the water looked brown and yucky.  But the powdery white sand was lovely.

My beautiful children.

  See it?

We drove for miles over swampy areas on these raised roads.

Alabama highway.

The Ice Box.  We saw a bunch of these serve-yourself ice houses.

I took this picture to show the red soil.  It's really beautiful in contrast with the luscious greenery and blue sky.

We're headed to Abbeville, home of the 15th Alabama, but tonight we only made it as far as Enterprise.  

On the west coast, main highways run north and south - Hwy 5, Hwy 101, and the lovely Hwy 1 along the California coast.  Then to go east-west you have to take a smaller highway.  For most of our drive, however, it's been the opposite.  East-west interstates - Hwy 10, 40, 70, 80 and 90, counting south to north - are easy to find.  But moving north or south takes some doing, so we had to zig-zag along for much of the first part of our trip.  Now that we're nearly on the east coast, it's reversed again.  So we were able to take a major highway up to Enterprise, but to get to Abbeville to the east is going to take a bit of wandering along smaller highways.  Quite a bit, as it turns out.