We decided to tour a few houses in Natchez, and drove downtown to the horse-drawn carriages for the initial tour around town to get our bearings. Our carriage took on two other couples that had just landed on the Delta Queen river cruise boat and away we went. Our driver was a nice guy and sure had a deep-south accent! We then set off on foot and toured Rosalie, Stanton Hall, and The House on Willit's Hill. We ended up at the railroad/carriage ride depot and got a really big soda to cool off. It was hot! We learned later that the heat index was up to 104 degrees that day with the humidity. We learned once and for all why Southerners never hurry!

    Then we jumped into the car and hit the air-conditioning button. Using the StreetAtlasUSA maps (by DeLorme), coupled with a GPS on the laptop computer, we drove to Longwood, the largest octogonal house in the USA. A sad story surrounds this house about the Nutt family that began building it, getting caught in the goings on of the civil war and losing all their land and crops, which bankrupted the family. After Dr. Nutt died of yellow fever, his wife alone raised the eight children without any income or relief from the Union Army. The house still stands as it did at that time with only the basement finished and the rest of the amazing structure completely open and unfinished. What a house it would have been, the jewel of the South, but it never was to be.

    We still had time on our hands and drove along the old Natchez Trace which was the trail/highway that was used by the boatmen that would come down the river on flatboats. Since the boats were not able to return upstream, they were sold as lumber, and the crewmen would then hike back to St. Louis for the next run. This trail has been turned into a car-only highway and runs through some very lovely forested terrain. We went up about 20 miles, visited the second largest Indian mound in the US.

    We dined again that evening at the Monmouth and had a much smaller group on this Sunday night with three husband-wife couples, one of which had just married that very day. Bill and I picked up their dinner tab as a wedding gift to them. Again, it was a very nice dinner with delicious food and great company, all around that one, large dining table.