Enjoy Gordon House, Jackson Falls, tobacco farms, 2000 year-old burial mounds, Pearl River, Cypress Swamp, the Trace, a large Indian burial ground, and various crafts.
The Natchez Trace Parkway is a 429-mile drive from Franklin, Tennessee all the way to Natchez, Mississippi. The trip takes 2 to 2-1/2 days. After paying a visit to the Carnton Plantation in Franklin, drive west out of town to Route 96. The Trace progresses through open fields and woods on the way to the Gordon House, one of the few remaining structures on the old Trace. Just after Gordon House lies Jackson Falls and a tobacco farm featuring exhibits on how to grow tobacco. A 2-mile drive along the original Old Trace starts here.
The Sweetwater Branch nature trail is situated on the other side of the open farmland. Another twenty miles of woods tales you to the Alabama border. Go across the Tennessee River at Colbert Ferry and follow the quarter-mile Freedom Hills Overlook trail. Read more . . .
This is a short drive, but there are so many good occasions to stop and see or do things that it will take at least a day to achieve most of them. If you stop for all the interesting places along this drive, you will need one week, but it’s worth doing as they are all good. Begin at the NASA Test Site next to the first I-10 exit out of Louisiana. At the NASA Center, you might see, or at least hear, rocket engines being experimented and see some excellent exhibits. Next, drive south on Route 607 for about 20 miles to Bay Saint Louis.
Originally a section of a 19th Century Spanish frontier trail, this 109-mile, 3-hour trip through southern Louisiana Cajun country is best accomplished in the spring and fall, as summers are naturally hot and humid. Begin in Houma, the center of Terrebonne Parish and a seat of Cajun tradition. Feast on some of the local etouffe, gumbo, or jambalaya before heading west on Bayou Black Drive (U.S. 90), skirting the bayou. Colorful operators along the way provide tours of the Atchafalaya Basin, North America’s biggest river-basin swamp. Outside Houma, look for the turnoff on the right for Wildlife Gardens, which features swamp tours, an alligator farm, and trapper’s cabin. 
This 105-mile, 2-1/2 hour route winds through wildlife refuges, prairies, marshes, and Gulf shoreline in southwestern Louisiana and is a favorite of birding and shelling enthusiasts. The leisurely drive is best accomplished fall through spring, and insect repellant is extremely recommended. The drive takes off from Sulphur, just west of Lake Charles on I-10. Its name is taken from the huge mineral deposits found in a nearby salt dome. Going south on Route 27, it goes across the Intercoastal Waterway and passes Calcasieu Lake. Beyond the bridge, the landscape changes dramatically to a brackish tidal marsh, followed by oil fields and a shipping channel. It then continues on through Hackberry where many shrimp boats crisscrosses Calcasieu Lake.