A leisurely ride is the way to enjoy the Natchez Trace Parkway

August 10, 2005|Diane Daniel, Globe Correspondent

NASHVILLE -- When you hear ''Nashville," you probably think of country music and the Grand Ole Opry, not bucolic scenery and the great outdoors. But on the south side of town is the start (or, officially, the end) of the 444-mile Natchez Trace Parkway, a leisurely, slightly curving two-lane road that connects Nashville with Natchez, Miss., to the south.

If you travel the trace, your goal is not to get from here to there but to enjoy the ride.

Like the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia and North Carolina, Natchez Trace is managed by the National Park Service. It has speed limits from 40 to 50 miles per hour. But unlike the Blue Ridge, the Natchez Trace is not about winding roads and dramatic mountain overlooks. Instead, the terrain is gently rolling, sometimes even flat, and the views are of forests and fields. There are overlooks, but the elevation range is a mere 70 to 1,100 feet. One writer, who bicycled the entire parkway, called it the ''Natchez Trance" for its lack of action. (Don't wild turkey sightings count?)

In several spots you can park and stroll along the original trail; its heyday was from 1790 until 1820, when steamboat travel made the trace obsolete. The National Park Service began paving the parkway in 1938 but just this spring finished the final 21 miles, near Natchez and Jackson, Miss.

There are about 100 marked stops along the trace, ranging from Emerald Mound, an Indian burial ground (milepost 10.3), to Elvis's birthplace in Tupelo, Miss., (260) to Meriwether Lewis's grave (385.9). We took two day trips from Nashville to visit the 58 miles between Lewis's grave and the northern terminus. The only visitors center is at the southern end, so we got a park map beforehand and also followed the invaluable ''Guide to the Natchez Trace Parkway," by F. Lynne Bachleda (Menasha Ridge Press, 2005).

For our first day, we parked, bicycles in tow, near the majestic Highway 96 double-arch bridge (milepost 438) and started cycling south. You can see this award-winning 1,648-foot bridge from the parking area, but, as our guidebook suggested, we also viewed it from below, where its sleek design looks even more impressive.

At Burns Branch (425.4), we walked part of the original path in the woods, imagining those who had walked before us. We turned back a few miles after the Tennessee Valley Divide (423.9), a watershed that in 1796 was the boundary between the Chickasaw Nation to the south and the United States to the north.