Hi Friends,

Today was another big day and I can't even remember all we did and saw but here are some highlights.

Gasoline: $ .92/gallon

Did a "quickie tour" of Baton Rouge with stops at The Apollo Blues Club and Tabby's House of Blues. Tabby's looked abandoned because the windows were boarded up but we could see it was a "happening" spot -- the posters boasted "Home of the Baton Rouge Blues Men" Appearing nightly: "Rocking Tabby Thomas and Henry Gray."

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Drive. Drive. Drive. Rain. Rain. Rain.

Once on Highway 61, we spotted a WILD TURKEY on the side of the road. Sue and I both agreed this was a good sign --- WILD TIMES ahead!!!

We visited a Southern cotton plantation home that had been built in 1806. Here's a view of an antebellum from the plantation road.

There were a couple of slave cabins located a short distance from the Oakley Plantation we visited and as I walke that the cabins had looked this nice when they were inhabited. I also found myself hungering to know "who had lived in these cabins?" As I placed my hands on the walls of the cabin, I was wishing for the world of the past to merge with my present world those forgotten ghosts could tell me about themselves. Who were these people? What were their names? How many people lived in the tiny one room cabin remain intact? My heart ached when I thought about how harsh and cruel their lives must have been. I thought about the slaves who lived in the little cabins laboring under the scorching rays of the sun; forced to work in the cotton fields from sunrise to sundown. I turned my ear to the fields and could a-l-m-o-s-t hear them singing field work songs: the work songs that would later become blues songs. How ironic that pain and suffering should give birth to a music style that I now think of as "medicine for my soul."

Several hours after leaving the plantation we passed this decrepit clapboard house and I couldn't help but think perhaps this is what the slave cabins must really have looked like when they were inhabited.

We are actually going to sleep directly across the road from the docks of "Old Man River" with a real steamboat parked out front. Natchez is the oldest settlement along the Mississippi River and in the old days the area along the banks was known as "Under the Hill" and wassimilar to the Barbary Coast of San Francisco: riverboat rogues, loose women, gamblers, smugglers, etc. (A place where Voodoo Girls feel right at home.)

We feel like we have stepped back to a time about a hundred and fifty years ago. The room has high ceilings, a beautiful old bed with a canopy, chandelier and is filled with antiques. Over the mantle is a huge painting of a woman. One of her eyes has been damaged through time. (I regret not taking a photo of it now.) It is creepy... Sue and I get the feeling we're in an old spooky movie where someone is peeking in from the other side of the painting. If we didn't know better, we would think "the eye" was following us as we move around the room. As I type this, Sue is setting up the blues altar and our plan is to conjure up some old spirits and have some visitors tonight.

Before retiring, we dined on a fabulous dinner complete with Voodoo Blackened Beer and then walked over to the river's edge to collect some holy water and wouldn't you know my mojo bag started acting up again; began crying out for a little baptismal ceremony.

From this point on, we become the "Mississippi Medicine Show." Our traveling blues alter is growing.

We love all your messages......keep them coming.

Have Blues Will Travel---------------love and kisses, the voodoo girl