The hills are alive – Poverty Point Historic State Park, Pioneer, LA

History comes alive as you climb (but not wheelchair) 3,000 years into the past on a towering Indian mound

A system of grassy mounds tell the story of an ancient Indian city that thrived on the banks of the Mississippi a thousand years before the birth of Christ. Poverty Point Historic State Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (and US Historical Monument), one of 22 in the US recognized by the UN cultural body as the most impressive places in the world. The site is particularly interesting because it was a city of hunter-gatherers, when most every other ancient city was made possible by the introduction of farming. The Poverty Pointers were overachievers.

Site of an ancient building.

Panning for relics: This scientist was so cool

We just happened to visit on International Archaeology Day and the center had live demonstrations all day long in ancient fire-starting, toolmaking, archaeology and most unusual, the sling-like weapon called the atlatl. Now the Mab throws atlatl: beware! Rangers, guides and scientists were all super-informative and fun to talk to. There was plenty for kids to do, too.

Atlatl

Making arrow tips

The museum, grounds and sidewalks are all level and easy to use. There is a tram tour Wednesdays – Sundays at 10 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 1 p.m., and 3 p.m., March through October, weather permitting, and it is wheelchair accessible. Though it was a challenge to shoehorn my Permobil F3 (45 inches length including feet) into the available space on the old tram, we made it work and it was well worth it.

The only thing that isn't accessible is the greatest feature in the park: the climb up the wooden steps to the top of the majestic Bird Mound, shaped like a gigantic bird and dominating all the other features in the area. I hear the Acropolis in Athens is now wheelchair accessible, but this is a Louisiana State Park (and a seemingly well-run one at that). But it was wonderful watching Mabster scale the stairs that climbed the length of the tail and spine all the way up to the head of the ceremonial bird, maybe three stories tall.

Like the national parks, UNESCO World Heritage Sites like Poverty Point are awesome destinations, especially if you like history and native cultures.

They stand vigil over the river - Vicksburg National Military Park, Vicksburg, MS

On a high bluff overlooking the Mississippi 60 miles from Poverty Point Historic State Park is the site of one of the nation's most important battles. During the Civil War, the river was the lifeblood of the U.S., and whoever controlled Vicksburg controlled the lower river. Here the river winds like a snake, and the Confederate fort at Vicksburg, perched on a high bluff and stacked with artillery, could obliterate anything going by. Both sides needed Vicksburg.

The Union, led by Ulysses S. Grant, laid siege, pounding the fort with heavy guns. We already know that the Confederates had the artillery to hit back. Both sides dug in and let loose, making hell on earth for weeks on end.

This is going to be a picture-heavy post. That's because there are no words to say it like we seen. In the park you drive a narrow loop a couple miles long. Everywhere you turn you see monuments to the detachments, commanders and the states who fought here.

This batch, the Illinois Monument, modeled on the Pantheon in Rome

The place is hilly and green with moguls: these are the entrenchments and bunkers where the cannons fired from. You drive a long, narrow loop. Only a couple hundred yards over those low, rolling hills you can see the cars of tourists on the other side of the loop. Those cars are in enemy territory. These boys firing the massive iron balls were practically on top of each other. This realization, and the sheer number of dead, are the things that affected me most.

You settle into a somber, respectful silence as the battlefield tells the story more viscerally than all the books and documentaries you've ever seen. Honestly, I would have liked even more help visualizing where the actual walls and other landmarks stood - but the experience is profound.

The visitor center is easily accessible. By itself it did not strike me as a great museum resource, but there the Park Service offers a number of free or cheap resources like guided or self-guided driving tours to do. We spent three hours max, and covered some 80 percent of the park, all from inside the car.

National Park Service: Vicksburg National Military Park

Rollin' on the river - New Madrid Historical Museum, New Madrid, MO

As a kid in Illinois, part of the folklore that got drilled into my head alongside Abraham Lincoln and the Great Chicago Fire was that the biggest earthquake in American history did not take place in San Francisco or anywhere near California, but in southern Illinois - a tremor so strong that it rang bells in Philadelphia and made the Mississippi River run backwards. Later on I found out it was really centered just south of Illinois, in New Madrid, Missouri, and occurred in 1831, but in my mind it was still a monster on a par with Godzilla. The New Madrid earthquake was something I've always wanted to learn more about, especially having driven through the area several times over the past few years. It killed me that there was never enough time to pull over and check out this storied place. But now, with the RV, we can.

New Madrid lies in the bootheel of Missouri, flat river lowland prone to flooding, and it was here that I first saw cotton fields. (The lady at the museum told me how in the days of Big Cotton, one of the growers was so powerful that he nixed his land going over to Arkansas and arranged for it to go to the Show Me State instead, creating that crazy, lazy bootheel hanging there like an appendix, that makes you scratch your head whenever you see it on the map.) Present-day New Madrid has a few thousand people and its own levee on the Mississippi River, which you can see and drive upon in a beautiful river outlook that is also a part of the Trail of Tears, where Cherokee refugees waited in the cold for ferries to bring them across from Tennessee.

Gorgeous Mississippi River overlook on the levee

Less than 100 yards downhill stands the historical museum. It is only two rooms, and then a second floor. No problem getting in with the wheelchair, but there is no elevator to the upstairs so what they do is show you a photo album of the items there. This tiny place really couldn't raise the money for an elevator, I think, plus the woman who showed me the pictures told some pretty good stories that the folks going upstairs weren't hearing. The earthquake exhibits are all on the ground floor. Otherwise everything is flat and no surprises for the chair.

Upstairs

Half of the museum is about the earthquake, and the rest is mostly Civil War and Indian artifacts, plus some 19th-century household and heirloom items that were contributed by the oldest families in
town. It was all interesting, and we spent an hour and half.

If you're interested about the earthquake, it hit during a winter night and turned everyone out shivering in the cold as they endured the aftershocks. There were three quakes stronger than 8.0 on that first night (scientists now lump all three into one rolling terror) and there was a 8.0 earthquake the next day and another in the days following. Each one of them was a monster quake, and then there were hundreds of smaller ones for months afterwards. It changed the course of the river, split open the earth and left features in the landscape still visible today. (At least one of them is doing duty as the friendly neighborhood sand trap at a nearby golf course.) The cool thing is that there is a New Madrid fault to this day, although you can't see it because it's under several feet of caved in earth and sand. But I see a movie coming on here... Paging Tom Cruise and Ben Affleck.

The museum is $5 and definitely worth a visit if you like history. Be sure to check out the Trail of Tears river outlook right up the street.