Natchez Trace Parkway

While traveling the Natchez Trace Parkway, I stopped to take this panoramic shot. This area is called the Black Belt, because of it's rich, dark soil, left behind by an ancient coral sea.

The parkway is 444 miles long. It is a road created by migratory animals, followed by the first human inhabitants of the land, then by the Spanish, and now by me. It is a parkway that allows no commercial traffic - just motorhomes, cars, vans, and pickup trucks. It has limited access and two lanes. There are no utility poles, no driveways, very few crossroads, and in my 200 mile treck, I passed less than 50 cars during the day. The speed limit is 50 mph, and that's fine because there is a lot of beautiful scenes to see.

Falls of the Ohio - here's a link

There is a lot of history, natural and human, relating to these falls. Clarksville, Indiana is the first American settlement of the Northwest Territory. The riverbed is made up of a 365 million year old coral reef. That is Louisville, Kentucky in the background. Louisville became a thriving city due to the portage needed to circumvent the falls. In the movie, "How the West Was Won" a family was nearly wiped out when they mistakenly took their raft through the worse part of the Falls of the Ohio.