Natchez, Part I

So, this year's get-away is Natchez, Mississippi.  My first real vacation in two years.  If you haven't heard an account of last year's Misery at the Library, consider yourself lucky.  I won't talk about that here.  I am, after all, on vacation.

Mom and I boarded Amtrak in Syracuse on Wednesday, September 17th.  As usual, the train ran late.  By the time we got up the next morning, it was FOUR HOURS late.  Some of the folks riding with us barely made their afternoon connections.  We thought we were going to have just enough time to grab lunch and board our train, but discovered at the station that the schedule had been changed, and we still had a five-hour layover.  (We are seriously considering taking a Chicago city tour on our return trip, as we will have a nearly 12-hour wait, assuming the train is on time.  Yeah, right.)

We were about 25 minutes late getting into Brookhaven, MS, where we had reserved a car.  The station master was a little put out at this; he expected us to be in by 12:30 or so.  The station is open twice a day: from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., and from 3:30 to 4:40 p.m.  That's when the trains pull in traveling south and north, respectively.

We contact the Herz rental office, and a nice young man drove over and picked us up.  I then signed the rental papers, and we were given a larger car than we had asked for, since the car they wanted to give us wasn't ready.  (No complaints -- the car we have handles beautifully.)

We headed south to Natchez, and managed to find the Visitors' Center, which doubles as the National Parks office as well.  Bonus!  Picked up maps and brochures, got information on tours, and got directions to our hotel.  (For some reason, the GPS has no idea what hotel I'm talking about.)  Oh, and we found out why it was so difficult to get rooms this weekend -- there's a HOG convention in town.  HOG=Harley (Davidson) Owners Group.  Yup, motorcycles everywhere.  All weekend long.  Yee-haw.

Will post more when I start getting pictures uploaded.