Natchez Trace - Hiking the Potkopinu

Alas, this was our last day on the Natchez Trace.  We drove down the southernmost section of the parkway to Natchez, Mississippi, and then to our RV campground in Vidalia, Louisiana, just across the Mississippi River from Natchez.  We got settled and hurried back up to hike one last section of the Natchez Trace National Scenic Trail before rain closes in this evening.

We stopped to take a photo of the sign at the entrance to the Southern Terminus of the Natchez Trace Parkway:

Here we are at the trailhead, about 17 miles up the parkway:

Potkopinu, the southernmost section of National Scenic Trail, is only three miles long, but it is the longest remaining stretch of "sunken" historic Old Trace. Named for the Natchez Indian word meaning "little valley," this trail has some embankments over twenty feet high.  Below, David marvelled at the large trench as we first entered it:

Even the shallower segments of this section are sunken.  While some have said that the trail was worn down by the thousands of "Kaintucks" who marched up the trail from Natchez and New Orleans after riding their boats down to deliver goods to the southern ports, we think it's more likely that most of the wear on the trail occurred over the centuries before that as bison used the trail for north-south migration.

It is late October, and this area of Mississippi is still not showing too much autumn color.  However, a few trees, and many grasses, are starting to glow gold, orange and even red as temperatures continue to drop:

This is the deep southeastern forest, and we found many trees entwined by vines and ivy:

The further north we hiked, the deeper the trace sank below the ground on either side:

It's difficult to show you the scale of the depression left by the Old Trace until you see this 360-degree video of the Old Trace.

As we hiked, we found many souvenirs of autumn, including this hickory nut --

-- and some puffballs which we tried to pop as we walked along -- with little success.  Kathy spotted this very large fungus along one wall of the sunken trail:

Something Kathy didn't spot -- until she almost stepped on it -- was this huge rattlesnake -- at least four feet long.  He was stretched lazily along the trail and we almost didn't spot him due to his camouflage:

We speculated that he had just eaten something and was lazily stretched out, digesting his meal.  He didn't even react to us as we stood nearby to discuss him and then took his photograph.

Whew!  Another near-death experience, with disaster narrowly averted.  This is how we roll.