Breast Cancer Ride Day 7 Vicksburg Mississippi

Catfish Row Murals, Vicksburg



Riverside park with steamboat stacks



Yearly styles of coke bottles at the Coca Cola Museum




Crossing the border daiquiri party






After the 85 mile ride from Natchez to Vicksburg, we had an optional day off to explore Vicksburg. There was an 18 mile ride around the Vicksburg Military Park that some of the women decided to do. Since both my sister and I had struggled with the hills and insidious slopes which looked like down slopes when they were really up slops on the Natchez Trace, not to mention any number of sharp steep hills, with more up than down coming into Vicksburg, which Kris had done while I sagged, neither of us felt ambitious enough to do another 18 miles of hills. Kris had also completed her first 85 miles day coming into Vicksburg and was feeling pretty wiped so we opted for a quiet day.

We had heard about the fried green tomatoes and Rusty’s Riverside Seafood Grill so we started exploring downtown there. The tomatoes were delicious, light and crispy and smothered with lump crab in a creamy Béarnaise sauce. Afterwards we walked down to an area of downtown Vicksburg called Catfish Row. The walls of the levee are cement and have been painted with murals depicting sights and scenes from Vicksburg. Across from the park is a children’s park containing colorful towers which are replicas of the various steam and paddleboat smoke stacks and parts of river paddle wheeler The Sprague, also called “Big Mama” because if it’s size. The Sprague exploded and sank in the early 1900’s but the wrought iron bridgework and wheel have been re-assembled to create an imaginary steam boat for children to play on.

We also stopped in at Birnbaum’s old fashioned candy store, home of the Coca Cola Museum to admire rows and rows of coke bottles and coke advertising paraphernalia. The prices they were asking for some of collector’s bottles were pretty impressive as well.

We took a taxi back to the military park and ecplore the bookstore, watched the informational video and viewed the exhibits, and then walked back to Best Western for dinner.

The traditional of Woman Tours is to celebrate crossing each state line with Margaritas around the gear van in the evening. We were unable to celebrate in Natchez because the group was s plit between two hotels, so we had our daiquiri celebration. Actually the timing was probably better as it assured that everyone relaxed a bit before the long ride tomorrow.