Allison's Wonderland

7/30/2011
Day 2 on our trek through the deep south….

Woke up in our lovely hotel and hit the road. I slept again for awhile in the car which was wonderful! Especially since Jeanne woke me up at 5:30 to get ready for the day. I don’t know how she does that, but she does. It’s kind of insane. On our drive I kept noticing the beautiful clouds and the carribbean blue sky. I just looked out the window and stared. We got into Natchez, Mississippi at around 1:30 and headed straight for Longwood Plantation. Although they don’t call them plantations we found out after taking our evening carriage ride. This place was out of this world cool. The picture at the top is my family in front of the house. It did not look like it belonged in Mississippi because it is modeled off of a Chinese Byzantine temple. It looks almost Moorish. The home was started in 1860 by Haller and Julia Nutt. Both Millionaires in the south. She took in about 1 million dollars a year in her surrounding plantations and he took in about 3. 4 million dollars in 1860 was a lot of money. Heck, it’s a lot of money now. They had 11 children only 8 of which survived to adulthood. Unfortunately, the home was never finished. The Civil War broke out and all the Philadelphia workers the architect hired headed back north to fight for the Yankees. Hallor Nutt also died in 1864 leaving his widowed wife to tend to the children and an unfinished house. Julia lost all of her riches because she changed her money from Greenbacks to Confederate money and she also didn’t have any useful skills since she was pampered all her life. Poor thing!

Anyway, the house is interesting because the tools left are all still there. The only part of the house that was finished was the basement which totaled an area of 10,000 square feet. It’s the largest octagonal house in all of America. Needless to say it was cool and oh yeah I got myself a pin! Just walking outside to go see the Nutt’s gravesite I got over 9 bug bites on my legs. The bugs are bad here and I kind of hate that about Mississippi. Bugs are EVERYWHERE! After our tour we checked into our Bed & Breakfast called Dunleith which is just as equally cool. It’s an Antebellum home and it is absolutely stunning. Kels and I got to our room and it hadn’t been cleaned so we got poor sarcastic, cynical Staci spelled with a S-T-A-C-I dotted with a heart as he said to move us to a second room that had no air conditioning. Our poor bell boy (Staci) had to then move all our crap to a basement room which wasn’t so bad. Staci definitely did NOT like his job and told us to get something more useful than and English degree, otherwise we’d be stuck here working on an old run down house as he called it.

We’re not actually staying in the main house, but we’re in the slave quarters. For slave quarters they’re really not too shabby! Headed to “Pig Out” on Canal Street for some legit barbeque. It was really good. Went down to the Mississippi river and took some pics. Then of course we had to go back to “Pig Out” and get some Blue Bell Ice Cream. I got the Pralines & Cream and it was SOOO good! Went back to Dunleith and got in the 90 degree pool water. Believe it or not it was actually refreshing after being outside in our 95 degree day.

After that we got a carriage ride around downtown Natchez which was cool and informative. Our tour guide was named Guy and our horse was named Hal. So cute. Kels and I fed him carrots. Hal that is.  We learned that 12 out of the 17 millionaires living in America before the war all came from Natchez where Cotton was King. There are over 600 Antebellum homes just in this area which is more than anywhere else in the south. They’re seriously everywhere and I LOVE IT! The Antebellum time period is one of my favorite Historical times to learn about. Came back to our B&B afterwards and crashed. Can’t wait till tomorrow’s adventure!