New ships, insightful port excursions update a nostalgic float
By David G. Molyneaux and Fran Golden
TheTravelMavens.com
Natchez, Miss.
To many Americans, the rural south of Mississippi and nearby states remains a mystery. Travelers seldom talk with people who live here, whether visiting or not. Even guided tours of towns, monuments, and hallowed grounds tend to focus on the Civil War and a way of plantation life that ended, more or less, 150 years ago.
Through this countryside flows America’s greatest river, the Mississippi, which hasn’t changed much for centuries and remains relatively untamed, as recent floods attest.
Hard-picked cotton and Mark Twain floated this way, and so did the old paddle-wheelers no longer in service.
New vessels have modernized the accommodations and experiences of floating on Old Man River, so you may watch the South roll by, framed from a swath of natural beauty and peace (after the annual flooding dissipates).
You may visit an occasional antebellum mansion for antiques-viewing and cultural expositions that never seem fully to explain the past or present.
You may walk the battlefield of Vicksburg National Military Park to contemplate the “how-could-we-all-have-done-that.”
Today’s cruises on the Mississippi River also offer new excursions, designed for curious travelers to rummage about the river towns, and opportunities to get deeper onto the soil and closer to the soul of the South.
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