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Our 2017 Vacation
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In September we flew to New Orleans from with Edith Frieser and met her husband Jochen who came from Las Vegas. We stayed three nights in the Big Easy touring the French Quarter and the World War II Museum. The entire French Quarter was shabbier than we expected. Bourbon St. was all torn up so that we could only walk crowded on the narrow sidewalks. The restaurants were, of course, excellent, but the oppressive heat was such a downer that we found it hard to stay out for long periods of time.
After New Orleans, we went on a swamp boat and saw many aligators and other bayou wildlife before driving to Natchez Mississippi. In Natchez we stayred at Weymouth Hall which is one of may antebellum B&B's. It was very charming an overlooked the Mississippi River.
Next up was Vicksburg. We traveled along the Natchez Trace Parkway whenever possible. It was a beautiful drive with hardly any traffic.
In Vicksburg we toured the Vicksburg National Military Park, with many monuments and cannon from the 1863 siege. The tour is a 15 mile drive through the Union and Confederate lines as well as the remains USS Cairo a gunboat that was sunk during the battle.
Next we drove to Memphis on the River Road across the Mississippi Delta. It was flat farm land with mostly cotton fields. There were few towns, just farm equipment dealerships, churches, and Dollar General stores. You never see the river along the River Road. The towns we did go through were exactly like you would expect in rural Mississippi.
We didn't care much for Memphis. The river front area park is nice and we did enjoy a 90 minute cruise on the paddle boat Memphis Queen. Downtown Memphis (especially the Beale St. area) is (like New Orleans) shabby and not vibrant like Seattle or San Francisco. Beale St was about three blocks long of bars, blues, noise and crowds. Graceland was to our minds a complete rip-off. We found Memphis to be quite seedy, hot, humid, and not very appealing.
We also drove to the Shiloh National Military Park which was about a three hour drive from Memphis. It was well worth the trip. The battlefield tour was similar to Vicksburgs, but it was a much smaller battlefield It's a very pretty part of the country though. Both of these battlefield tours would be great to do on a bicycle as long as it wasn't over 70 degrees (at least for those of us not conditioned to the humidity). After the battlefield we had a great lunch at Catfish Hotel. We had a great lunch there. The catfish was delicious and the fried chicken was fabulous.
We had a very good time, but the cities were dissappointing.
Click on this link to view photos.
Back in Bremerton Bonnie is enjoying working on her book art and creating a new garden. She recently attended the Newport Paper Arts Festival in Newport, Oregon.
Howard is creating steam bent wooden bird schupturesscruptures and is a member of
The Rotary Club of East Bremerton.
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Howard B. Julien
Contact Via Email
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| Updated October 3, 2017
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Howard's DF Trivia
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DF Trivia is a genre of trivia that can consist of one of two types of questions:
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Questions which have an obvious answer but where that obvious answer is in fact incorrect. The obvious answer may be included in the question or it may be obvious using common, yet incorrect, assumptions.
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Questions that have an obvious wrong answer but where that obvious incorrect answer is in fact correct. The obvious answer may be included in the question or it may be obvious using common, yet incorrect, assumptions.
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Traveling due south from Detroit, what is the first foreign country that you cross ?
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