Picture Post, Sunday January 14, 2007

When Lovely Wife and I headed back toward Florida from our Louisiana trip on December 31, we made a stop at the Mississippi welcome center on I-20 in Vicksburg, Mississippi. It was an absolutely stunningly beautiful day. The welcome center is also a good source of information on the seige on Confederate forces at Vicksburg.

The bridge on the left carries I-20 across the Mississippi River. The bridge on the right is for trains.

A wee bit of information of the Civil War seige that occured here.

Fortuitous timing brought a train lumbering across the Mississippi River toward us. Makes the picture much more interesting.

I was intrigued by how the brilliant sunshine of the day cast such a sharp shadow of the train bridge onto the river. I waited a couple of minutes until the tug and its group of barges came into view, to add a little life.

Mississippi has bowed to the earthly god of gambling revenues. This is one of the "boats" that are basically floating casinos. But the red (fake) smoke stacks of the gambling boat are really bright, and made an interesting foreground to the wide curve of the Mississippi River in the background.

I love color for color's sake, and the backlit American and Mississippi State flags were certainly worth a click.

There was a tourist billboard in Vicksbug along I-20 encouraging folks to stay (and drop some cash) by stating, "Stop and stay a while, Grant did." I was kind of surprised to see that, considering that some in The South still have very strong feelings regarding the American Civil War in the 1860s. (For those of you not familiar, General Grant was the Union forces commanding General in the Civil War. He later parlayed this into becoming U.S. President after the War.)