Day ELEVEN | CEMETERIES AND SHRINES




No more walking in Memphis, time to camp again!  Our next destination was Homochitto National Forest located in Natchez, MS.  But before arriving, we had to make a few stops along the way.  We stopped in Vicksburg at a cemetery called "Vicksburg National Cemetery" that held many fallen US Confederate soldiers.  It was a very large grave site, containing over 18,000 headstones.  When we were leaving the cemetery we saw this green vine that was covering huge areas of land and even climbing trees and telephone poles.  This intrigued many of us so we asked our professors what it was.  Turns out that the vine we were seeing everywhere was called Kudzu.  It was brought over from Asia to help control erosion along the railroad lines.  But the vine liked the climate in the south too much, and became very invasive.  It became known as "The vine that ate the South".  It can grow up to a foot per night and will grow over anything, houses, cars, anything in its path.

Kudzu

On our way out of Vicksburg, we stopped along the road at what looked like someone's front yard.  Turns out, Gary knew the guy that used to live there (sadly he passed away recently).  His name was Rev. Dennis, and he was a very religious man.  He built this shrine to God and Jesus Christ in his front yard.  It was built out of lots of everyday materials, such as brick, stone, and even a school bus.  He put them together to create these very interesting pillars and walls that has signs with scripture writing on them.  The blocks and bricks were painted very bright colors, orange, yellow, red, and blue being the most used.  We did a watercolor here and talked a little about the place.  Many of us wished we could have met Rev. Dennis and heard his story and the message he wanted the place to convey.

Finally we reached our campsite.  It was already dark when we arrived, so we had a bit of a hard time trying to pitch our tents.  Our campsite in Homochitto was one of the least primitive sites that we stayed at on either trip.  It had a large pavilion that had wooden benches, a fire pit, and a kitchen area with sinks.  The roof above the benches even had ceiling fans!  Some of us pondered the existence of ghosts and aliens while walking down to the shower house area.  There were some very large spiders in the area as well.  They spun webs from high trees all the way down to the ground.  For any of you that were jealous of us being down south in the warm weather, don't be.  There was a cold front that chilled us to the bone that night.  But after waking up with frost on our tents a few nights before in Missouri, we were used to it.  All in all, this travel day turned out to be pretty interesting and eventful. 

Over and out,
David and Nate