I have a friend, Nick, who also writes a travel blog. Nick likes to rant about things other than travel but he didn’t like messing up his blog with them. So he started a new blog called Bad Nick. He does his ranting there and, so far, after having thought about his points for awhile I have agreed with each of them. But, I don’t want to start a new blog so, if you don’t want to listen to Bad Linda, you can stop reading now.
The Natchez Trace is a National Park. That means the bumper sticker that says, “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do own the road,” is technically true. All U.S. citizens jointly own the Natchez Trace. That doesn’t mean we have the right to treat is as if it belongs to any one of us. Today I saw several people act as if it was theirs to do with as they chose. That bugged me enough to decide to tell you about it.
The first was actually a disconnected group of people. We were driving through the Jackson, Mississippi, metropolitan area. There are a lot of roads that cross under the Trace in the area. Locals obviously use the Trace to get from one of those roads to another. Please, remember the reason the Trace is here is so tourists can learn about our history. So those city people who are hurrying from one place to another have no right to be upset with the RVers who slow down for every little turnout. The turns are narrow and our RVs are large; we have to slow down to make those turns so we can learn about the history that brought us here. If you are in such a hurry that you need to zip around the RVs unsafely, please, take a different route. This is a parkway not a thruway, people.
Each entrance to the Trace has a sign that tells everyone that commercial vehicles are not allowed and that only recreational hauling may be done on the Trace. In the literature a commercial vehicle is defined as one displaying any name of a business on the outside of the vehicle.
In one pull-off we saw a pickup truck driver trying to re-secure his load. The load was Hefty brand paper plates and Charmin toilet paper. Lots and lots of both. A pickup bed full of those two items. He had a bunch of the paper plates unloaded and he was strapping down the TP. Apparently, such lightweight items did not want to stay in the bed of his truck but there was no way he was going to get anywhere near all of his load into the cab. Recreational hauling, right? Somewhere today there is a huge party where hundreds of people are being served plates full of prunes.
The final one was another pickup truck. It had a mattress and box springs in the bed. And a U-Haul trailer hitched to the back. I hadn’t realized that U-Haul is not a commercial entity. And that there are people who think moving their household goods is a recreational activity.
Live and learn, I guess.
TTYL,
Linda
Bad Linda, huh? Well, I don’t always agree with Bad Nick but I do agree with you. This is similar to DFW (Dallas-Fort Worth Airport) even though it’s not for recreation, the highway was built with a north entrance and a south entrance for folks wanting access to the actual airport. However, local people on their way to work would cut through many times causing lots of congestions for those the road was actually built for trying to catch a flight. What did they do? They put a toll on it based on length of time. If it takes you 8 minutes or less to enter at one end and exit at the other, you have a $2.00 penalty toll. The toll for ten minutes is less than the under 8 minute toll. If you were dropping a passenger off, it would take longer than 8 minutes. That was the theory. I would think the Natchez Trace could figure something out that would be profitable … but don’t have a clue. We haven’t been there …. yet.
Bad Linda has me chuckling about the recreational hauling. 😉
And see, you just needed the right subject material to get you back writing again…