Country Roads Take Me Home

On a drive through the back roads of Itawamba County, Mississippi and Marion County, Alabama this past Wednesday afternoon, Mike and I were exposed to some mighty pretty scenery.   We were delighted to find this wonderfully preserved dog trot, a perfect example of a typical Southern home a hundred years ago.  The house and grounds, even the out-buildings (every Southern farm had several...in addition to the barn you'd likely find chicken house, smoke house, outhouse, corn crib, pig pen etc) are being meticulously kept up.  No one appears to be living in the house, but I can just imagine someone in the family lovingly taking care of the property.    It was a beautiful old homeplace in northern Marion County.

Mike and I like to meander on country roads, and until the advent of smart-phone technology and the use of GPS on our cell phones, we'd usually get lost.   We still do when the signal from the nearest tower disappears, and I no longer have use of my cell phone and its useful GPS mapping application (as happened on Thursday during our drive through the Sipsey Wilderness and Bankhead National Forest, but that's another story).   We weren't lost however when I snapped the photograph below.   The land along the MS-AL state line between Itawamba-Marion and Itawamba-Lamar and Monroe-Lamar counties is amazingly beautiful.  This area is very remote with very few (good) "back" roads connecting the counties, but if you have the time to meander you will be rewarded with great scenery.  I snapped the photograph below not long after we crossed Hurricane Creek into Marion County.  There are many beautiful coves and pastures and bottom lands if you just get out and wander around.  You could probably say I was in between families at the time the photo was made - George Emerson Robinson on one side of the state line on Cotton Gin Road, and Isham James Loyd in Bull Mountain bottom on the other side in Alabama, and Jesse B. Davis smack dab in the middle around the corner from Providence Church.    Go a little further south, and there's William T. Bishop along the state line in Bexar.  I like to think that maybe they were watching and smiling.