The main reason we decided to visit Vicksburg, MS was the important Civil War battle between Gen. Grant and Gen. Pemberton, the city was a strategic place along the Mississippi River and therefore highly valuable. Mike’s a big Civil War buff, so we planned to visit the battlefield. We found the Ameristar Casino campground was conveniently located on the south side of the city, right off the highway and near the river. With our Good Sam membership, the price was extremely cheap - $19 a day for the weekly rate. We had a nice big spot on a concrete pad with a huge empty parking lot behind for our “chase car.” The Ameristar runs 24-hour shuttles from your site to the casino and has security patrols of the campground.
The Vicksburg Battlefield National Park was just a ten-minute drive from the campground. The park’s Visitors Center has a great “animated” map set up for explaining the course of the battle for Vicksburg, with blinking lights showing how Union troops led by Grant marched South down the western side of the river past Vicksburg, then crossed and came back up winning various battles along the way.
The battlefield park like many others is designed around a driving tour, with numbered stops. There is a smartphone app for the park which has maps and linked interpretive material explaining the siege. It is really a requirement because the signage in the park leaves something to be desired. There are signs around the visitor center with QR codes to download the app, and once downloaded the app does not use mobile data.
The Cairo battleship is a must see. The sunken hulk was recovered and partially reconstructed and now sits high and dry next to a museum full of artifacts from it. The structure was impressive to walk around and appreciate the advances in steamboat technology in wartime. The military cemetery lies across the road and is sadly massive.
While in town we got to see the Vicksburg Christmas parade which had many neat floats and was lots of fun. Mike loves these small-town holiday attractions: driving around looking at Christmas displays and lights, and watching the local businesses trot out for their Christmas parade. The parade touted high school bands, business floats, local clubs, and daredevil motorcycle riders. Happily, this Christmas parade ended the way so many do with Santa riding atop a fire truck! Once the parade goers began to disperse, we ventured into the downtown and grabbed dinner at 10 South Rooftop Bar & Grill. The bar has a fantastic view of the town and river below, but the place is noisy and exposed to cold night breezes, it also took over 40 minutes for us to be served our food. We worried this would be a trend in local dining and did not bode well for meals in Vicksburg.
Due to the mediocre WIFI at the campground, we ventured into the quaint downtown to find a better resource for coffee and internet. We found Highway 61 Cafe. As we sipped their delicious Mexican hot chocolate in this neat niche café in the heart of the old town, we noticed that in addition to random books – the walls were lined with DVDs despite the fact that there wasn’t a TV or DVD player that we could see in the place. I was curious if it was a lending library for the movies, but I didn’t ask.
In our pursuit of better WIFI, we also tried out the Ameristar Casino’s lunch buffet - $12 per person sounded pretty good to us. The casino has a great view of the river from the dining hall, though the WIFI was useless. The food was standard Mississippi buffet fare, with some shining standouts and some clear letdowns, and was refreshed frequently in smallish batches which greatly reduced any heat lamp sogginess.
Due to the shifting topography of the Mississippi River, its path has meandered East and West overtime. Many stretches of the River were re-engineered and straightened by the Army Corp of Engineers beginning in the nineteenth century. We learned about this history and process at the Lower Mississippi River Museum.
The museum has exhibits on the history of Vicksburg in relation to the river and the commerce and ecology of the river system. There is a large outdoor scale model of this district of the river showing the main channels and the levy system, with flowing water and the ability to simulate flooding. While at the museum we toured its star attraction: the dry-docked Corps of Engineers M/V Mississippi IV. During its time on the river, between 1961-1993 the vessel worked as a towboat, an inspection vessel for Corp of Engineers projects, and a public ambassador for meetings of the Mississippi River Commission (MRC). The retired Corp member, who was volunteering the day we visited told us, the vessel is nicknamed “Old Shakey,” so named by Corp members who had to live on it for months at a time and deal with vibrations of the vessel.
The retired volunteer also gave us some great advice on where to dine in Vicksburg, his two recommendations: The Tomato Place for smoothies and Rusty’s Riverfront Grill for fried green tomatoes.
We visited the Tomato Place first and as he had described it’s hard to get a great feeling from the outside of the place. The exterior looks a bit crumbly and farmstead-esque, it’s a bit dark and cluttered with random things, but has lot of fruits and vegetables available. There’s a huge bank of glass freezers with plastic cups filled with smoothie ingredients all freshly prepared – we picked out cups with the titles “Fourth of July” (other than large slices of banana, I’m not completely sure what all it contained) and “Strawberry Banana” (a little more self-explanatory). We took these cups through the cardboard covered door into their cafe area, again cramped, but brightly colored. There is a small menu of homemade food. Mike in a moment of dietary weakness ordered French fries to-go after smelling a basket of them and can attest that they were worth the calories. After first slightly thawing the frozen smoothie cups they blended up each concoction for us, and WOW! They were amazing. I had to savor mine slowly so as not to get a frozen headache from gulping it down. A few days later we went back – Blueberry Hill and Purple Haze were our selections the second time, and they were just as fantastic. They have plenty more flavors to try. [After we left Vicksburg for Natchez, we even considered driving to the Tomato Place, a 2 ½ hour drive, just to try another flavor.]
The second restaurant suggestion, Rusty’s Riverfront Grill, we didn’t immediately take to heart since the restaurant is located across the street from the museum, and we figured he was just being kind to give them business. Boy, were we wrong. On the day we planned to leave Vicksburg, after a two-week stay, it snowed, not a lot but enough to discourage us from getting out on the road. We opted to stay one more day, and since I had packed our pots and dishes, we decided to go out for dinner and figured we would try Rusty’s.
The host and waitress were exceedingly kind to us and upon looking at the menu and noticing the fried green tomatoes came topped with crab meat and hollandaise sauce, we reconsidered. They were “melt-in-your-mouth” delicious, ecstasy on a plate, my mouth is watering just writing about them. Mike is a stickler that fried foods to be “fried right.” The batter should be crispy, not burnt or soggy, and complimenting a well-cooked inside that isn’t oily. This appetizer nailed that balance perfectly. We completely cleaned the plate – the hollandaise sauce was superb and the tomatoes were perfectly cooked. Mike ordered a shrimp Po-boy for an entrée and I got the Hawaiian chicken, but I seriously should have asked for a second order of friend green tomatoes. YUMMY!
We finished off our scrumptious meal by sharing a Mississippi Mud dessert – an absolutely luscious concoction of warm brownie, marshmallow, and fudge! We were thoroughly full after dinner there. We wished we had visited there earlier during our stay, but agreed if we had we would have been repeat customers and probably gained 10 pounds each during our stay in Vicksburg.