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Michael and Robin Autry perused through antiques in Franklin Street Relics on Franklin Street, close to where the Dart landed Friday morning.

Yesterday, Michael said they had visited the shop but ran out of time and decided to come back this morning. He was born in Ripley and grew up in Forest where he lives with his wife currently.

They were on a one-day trip to Natchez, he said. His son-in-law and daughter recently stayed in an Airbnb.

“So we decided to come to check it out. We stayed at a house called Devereaux Shields House,” Autry said. “Last night, we ate at Roux 61, and I had the Catfish Lebeaux. It was delicious.”

Carriage rides were not an option because of the heat. Instead, the couple took a tour of Natchez in a van with A/C. Rev’s Country Tour took them on an adventure all over the city.

Indian mounds, forks of the road, Rosalie and Stanton Hall were stops on the tour. Each stop along the tour was “entertaining and historical,” he said. Robin said she loved seeing all of the beautiful antebellum homes.

She just recently retired as a nurse at St. Dominic, and Michael said he would like to retire soon from his job at Unipres USA — a tier 1 manufacture for Nissan —. They are both working on an old home of their own in Scott County.

“We have a 100-year-old house 15 miles outside of Forest. It is near my parent’s place. We wanted to be close to then,” he said. “We are living there more. It is an ongoing process of fixing it up. It is literally an old farmhouse. With a wood frame and wooden walls. We are trying to maintain the old farmhouse look.”

The home comes with a few acres of land, and it is close to public hunting land. It also has enough room for the couple to grow a garden.

They stumbled onto the single-story white wooden house close to a century old, through his parents about four years ago.

“An elderly woman lived there, and her parents built the home. My parents took care of the woman. When she turned 100, she went into a nursing home. I bought the house from her at a fair price to give her some money for a private nursing home.”

“The house is 15 minutes from town, but it is on a dirt road,” he said. “We can sit out there on the front porch in a rocking chair from sun up to sun down and see maybe 4 cars.”