Our route from Montgomery westward to Dallas took us straight through Vicksburg, MS, so we decided to stop in and visit H, one of my oldest Internet friends.  There was never a finer picture of Southern hospitality, as we arrived late to find a fantastic dinner of catfish and chicken and a puffy homemade “dutch baby” dessert waiting for us.  We spent the night in the parking lot of the Ameristar casino (casinos are also handy places for free one-night overnight parking, when they’re available) and then the next day we got lunch and a quick tour of the coolest parts of Vicksburg from H.  Lunch was had at the family-owned Main Street Market Café, which specializes in amazing sandwiches.

Vicksburg is a smallish town, and not a big tourist destination in spite of its historical significance.  Still, it’s worth a day’s stop.  There’s a pleasant historical drive, and this town is a big fan of statues, as busts of Civil War luminaries line the route.  H showed us Vicksburg’s downtown, a handsome historic-district sort of place.  You thought I was going to call it “quaint,” didn’t you?  No, Vicksburg is too big to be quaint, though it’s also too small to make it into the average tourist brochure.  Even the Lonely Planet guide’s intro was reasonably short, and omitted the 140-plus year-old Thomas Furniture Building, which collapsed into the street in 2006 and then sat there for two years, bricks spilling across the sidewalk, because the city and the owner got into a pissing match over the historic building’s fate and who should pay for its reconstruction and restoration.  The mess has been cleaned up off of the sidewalk, but the historic building’s fate is still in limbo.  Downtown’s also got a historical mural that stretches for two or three blocks along the riverfront, illustrating the history of the town, and of course the Ameristar riverboat casino, which was used in the Coen brothers’ remake of The Ladykillers.

Thanks to the unseasonably warm weather in V’burg (a warm front that was apparently blowing ahead of an ice storm from the west!), we were able to take a quick (properly chaperoned) drive through the grounds of the US Army COE Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC).  If you know where to look and have someone who’s got the clearance to take you, the ERDC has a display of prototype and unique military vehicles that, while not particularly well-tended, does show off the amazing variety of interpretations of “all-terrain vehicle.”  From screw-drive swamp buggies to trinary-drive wheels and, of course, a tank (which was amusingly labeled thusly:  “TANK.” Unfortunately, the pictures of the tank didn’t come out, so you get a self-propelled gun), this little parking lot is a gearhead’s playground…if you can find it.  The poor dears are weather-beaten and sinking into the ground; a few of them have trees growing through ‘em.  Cool, but kind of sad-making.

We would’ve liked to stay in Vicksburg a bit longer, but appointments in Dallas called; a round of upgrades to the moho needed to be done, and parts were waiting at the shop.  So, we bid Mississippi a regretful farewell, but we plan to return.