April 28-30, 2018 Natchez Lake State Park, Mississippi

80 degree sunny day.  Good day to relax in the shade.

I took my kayak out on the lake at dusk for sunset. I caught the moon in the sunset and a couple of moon tree shots, the last one is a forked moon.

These are all the antebellum homes you can tour here in Natchez. It is only a fraction of the many here. We have toured two. John has had enough but I want to do one more. Maybe tomorrow. It is tomorrow and we toured Stanton Hall. It is one of America's  largest antebellum mansions. It takes  up a whole city block. They don't allow photos of the inside so here is the outside. It was big and lovely furnished with antiques but they are all starting to look alike at this point. 

The Miss-Lou body shop, you bend 'em and we mend 'em. The big leaf magnolia bloom is 11 inches in diameter.The leaves are 25 inches long. My father worked for Kaiser aluminum and I worked for Kaiser health care but I have never seen a Kaiser gas station before. Some of the ornamental iron work on the porch of Stanton Hall. The National Cemetery in Natchez had 3,087 by 1870 and they only knew who 305 are. The collected all the bodies of the Union soldiers from Mississippi and Louisiana and buried them all here. It is now a veterans cemetery too so there are many more graves here. 

The Confederate soldiers are buried in the city cemetery. Probably just the local soldiers since there are much less. Most of them are unknown too. The city cemetery next to the National cemetery  established in 1822 is notable for it's variety of 19th century iron and marble work.

The Turning Angel is said to appear to turn toward you as you drive by it. On the pedestal of the angel is says that it was erected by the Natchez Drug company in memory of the unfortunate employees that lost their lives in the great disaster that destroyed their building in 1908. Seems they had a gas oven installed in one of their labs on the 4th floor. The next day they had one of the volunteer fire fighters come check for gas leaks. He did it how they do it in those days with a lighted candle. There was no gas leak on the 4th floor but he found one in the basement and the whole building exploded and burnt down taking two other buildings with it. There were around 10 people who died including the fire fighter. 5 young women ages 12-22 so damaged that they were buried in a single grave.Some bystanders were also killed. The full moon rising over Natchez Lake that I witnessed from my kayak tonight.

Another moon shot from the lake. I finished up these two cuties today. 

The first one is 4 1/2 inches tall and 5 wide. The center is a piece of glass I made and the beads are crackled glass.  The second one 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 inches. It has a blue magnetite heart in the center, a concho with a seed bead and gem chips around the edge. 

I spent most of the day in my chair working on the baskets. And read while I hooped and made bread. John smoked a pork roast for dinner and read his book.  Nice to have a down day for a change.