Amanda McCadams

Right now I don’t have a whole lot of vacation time built up.  I do however, need, crave, desire, and necessitate getting my head out of the day-to-day and into a completely different zone.  Don’t we all?  I am a firm believer in the European model of vacation time.  What is it again? 1 month off?  3 months off?  I’ve heard varying accounts but at any rate this 5 vacation days a year that I get is malarkey.  Unfortunately though, I’m stuck with it until I can come up with a better plan.

But…In keeping with my ever-positive attitude of making the best of things I decided to take a road trip down the Natchez Trace.  The vacation time I took was just a Friday and Monday, coupled with the weekend.  It was enough for me to come damn close to having my head in a different place.  I ignored 98% of emails, took it easy on the drive and most importantly I stopped and made photographs whenever I felt like it.  I even busted out my lovely Hasselblad and photographed with a light meter and real slide film.  It was divine.

The trip for the 444-mile journey started in Nashville, TN and ended in Natchez, MS. The obvious first stop along the route was a tasty breakfast at the famous Loveless Cafe.  Biscuits, biscuits, biscuits.  There was some other stuff in there too.  Coffee, definitely. But oh, those biscuits.

The Lewis County Museum of Natural History in Hohenwald, TN was the next stop.  It might be my favorite one of this trip. They were funny about me photographing in there – security reasons, or something like that.  I wasn’t able to make any images of that experience and that bummed me out, but Wow!  What a hidden treasure of natural history goodness this place holds.  Way back in the day, a husband and wife team by the name of Maddox donated their animal trophy collection to the museum so that the people of the area could see what these rare animals look like.  In the collection there is a leopard, polar bears, rare big game animals from Africa, all sorts of mountain sheep, exotic birds, even a tiger.  I was surprised at the magnitude and exceptional condition of the collection.  Besides being in need of a little dusting, they looked amazing.  Interestingly enough, this museum also has a wealth of information about Meriwether Lewis from the Lewis and Clark expedition.  He lived and died in the area, thus the name of the county, and this museum does a fine job of preserving his memory.

The last stop for the evening was a hotel in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.  Hotel quality – not so great.  Hotel potential for photographs – off the charts!  I was super excited to see that they had an empty swimming pool there with the gate unlocked.  It was just begging to be photographed.  To add further delight and amazement, after I had to switch rooms and go up to the second floor, because the first room seemed to be in the middle of a maintenance project or something, I saw an abandoned CRT television sitting in the hallway with just the right amount of open shade light that I knew, if I came back in the morning, it would be near perfect, and it was.