The Best of Natchez Part 2

While I'm on the Natchez kick this evening, I thought I'd add some more "best of." Aside from my favorite Natchez experiences, when Mom and Dad came to visit and when Sarah, Joel, and Eliza came to visit, I had a few other memorable occasions which I will describe below.

First, however, I forgot to say that I now have a new favorite treat: Strawberry Milkshake Oreos!!! They are so delicious. Mom had told me about them when they first appeared in Utah, but I couldn't ever find them here. So, Mom sent me some in the mail (she did a really good packing job--none of the cookies were broken!), and they are divine. I love them.

But, here are a few of the most random Natchez experiences:

The Rice-Cooker Cake
For my 23rd birthday this last summer, Mary Wubbena, one of the museum interns we had this summer who became my good buddy, wanted to make me a birthday cake. She had purchased a rice cooker for her dad for Father's Day but hadn't given it to him yet, and on the box it said that you could use it to make cakes in your microwave. So, she tried a microwave rice-cooker cake for my birthday. It was sooooo funny! :-) She made a chocolate cake with sprinkles, but the sprinkles kind of disappeared into the depths of the cake. It was as solid as a rock, but it was very tasty.


Renegade Shopping Cart
One morning last summer, we got to work, and saw this--a shopping cart from Belk which had taken off part of our sign :-) We laughed so hard, imagining how this must have happened. Belk was about 3 miles away from the park, so the cart obviously got some help from some mischievous children. It was just a really funny to see this on a serene, quiet, misty Natchez morning.


Alligator Sightings at St. Catherine's Creek
In 2006, Ranger Tim and I went to St. Catherine's Creek to the old plantation country to look around, and we saw a mom alligator and her two babies on the shore of the creek! I wanted to run away, but Tim insisted on taunting the gators until Momma Gator plopped into the water and started swimming towards us. Then Tim agreed that we should run away. We went back to the same spot this last summer, and there were two gators in the same place!! This one that I took a picture of swam pretty close to where we were walking, but luckily we left before the gators ate us.

Stryder Gets Impaled
This last summer, I went on a Civil War site hunt through Port Gibson, Mississippi with Matt and Angie's friend Rob. We followed Matt's directions and ended up on a terrible road through the middle of the forest with entire trees laying across our path. We finally made it through, but Stryder got impaled by one of the trees. Luckily I was able to remove the branch that was sticking out of his front fender.

Attack of the Pecan Tree
Poor Stryder. He had a rough summer! I woke up one morning and went outside at Routhland to find a pecan tree branch smashed into Stryder's windshield. That was not good. At the point of impact, the windshield had caved in about two inches! Luckily I found some people to come and replace the windshield. As I mentioned the other day, as I was giving Stryder his spring cleaning, I found some glass shards from the pecan tree incident. I decided I don't like pecan trees. I do like pecan pie though--especially with chocolate on it like they serve at the Magnolia Grill.

Jesus-in-the-Cradle Flower
This is Jessica's infamous "Jesus-in-the-Cradle" flower. I guess they call it that because the center of the flower resembles a cradle. Anyway, this flower only blooms once a year--in the middle of the night, of course. In 2006 when I was Jessica's roommate, she started pounding on my door one night. I thought the house was burning down, but she was just telling me that I needed to come see the flower. It was cool, but I wasn't too happy about waking up in the middle of the night. This last summer, Jessica asked me if I wanted her to call me on the night that it bloomed. I said no--seeing it once was pretty good.

Sugar Roses
Who would have thought I could make sugar flowers? During the summer of 2006, Sister McClure from the ward taught me how to make roses out of sugar paste. It took a long time, but they looked pretty cool. The church ladies were always inviting me to do interesting things like learn how to decorate wedding cakes and can figs. So, among my ranger friends, the church ladies earned the nickname "the fig ladies." Mmmm, I miss the fig tree that was right outside my door at Routhland.


So, those are a few of my funny, random memories of Natchez. I must be feeling extra nostalgic about Natchez lately because for the last two years, at this time of year, I've been getting ready to go to Mississippi for the summer. Hmmm, I'm looking at the weather, and tomorrow is supposed to be really quite nasty. There is supposed to be a "severe tornado outbreak" everywhere from Illinois to Texas. Craziness!