My mom was nice enough to fly all the way out to Tyler from upstate New York to drive back to Atlanta with me. Since neither of us are big on long-term driving, we opted to stop in Vicksburg, Mississippi on our one and only stop during our mini-road trip.

Just 4ish hours to the east of Tyler, Vicksburg is the first stop on the east side of the Mississippi River. We decided to drive around downtown Vicksburg, only to realize that pretty much everything in this part of the South is closed on a Sunday (lesson learned for the future...). Instead, we decided to head over to the Vicksburg National Military Park to drive through, looking at the many monuments dedicated to the brave soldiers who fought during this massive Civil War battle.

We only made it through maybe half the park by dusk and opted to head over to the Ameristar Casino which was, awesomely enough, shaped like a massive steamboat and located right on the Mississippi River. We blew through a whopping $10 and $8, respectively (I would like to take the chance to point out that I only spent $8...my mother cannot argue with this as it is in my blog post!), most of it at a certain haunted house-themed interactive slot machine. After a great buffet dinner overlooking a beautiful sunset over the Mississippi, we cashed out and called it a night.

The following day, we visited the Vicksburg National Military Park Visitor's Center and continued on our eastward journey...