Serving as both Mississippi Senator and Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce, Jefferson Davis staunchly supported slavery and states rights, though he opposed secession from the union as a method of maintaining Southern principles. When Mississippi seceded, Davis resigned his senate seat.

Following his tenure as President of the ill-fated Confederacy during the Civil War, a government indictment for treason (later dropped), and a couple of business failures, he retired to Beauvoir on the Mississippi Sound–as a guest of wealthy intellectual Sarah Dorsey–to write his memoirs. His wife joined him a year later and they purchased the estate, along with some furnishings, for $5,500. Davis died in 1889 but the property remained in the Davis family until 1902 when the central portion of the estate was sold to the Mississippi Division, United Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Beauvoir operated until 1957 as a home for Confederate veterans and their families and now the 51-acre estate, recognized as a National Historic Landmark, has been restored. Along with the Jefferson Davis Presidential Library, which opened in 1998, the home and grounds are open to the public. Beauvoir is located at 2244 Beach Blvd., Biloxi, Mississippi.

Point that RV of yours toward the just opened Waco Mammoth Site in Waco, Texas, where you can see a giant Colombian Mammoth from about 70,000 years ago. Of course, you can’t see the animals because they are long dead. But you can see their bones and learn all about the elephant-looking beasts. The Mammoth Site opened December 8.

The site is in a 100-plus acre stretch of wooded parkland along the Bosque River. Covered in sprawling oak, mesquite and cedar trees, it offer an escape from the modern world and provides a glimpse into the lives of Columbian mammoths. Though the first bones at site were discovered in 1978, the site remained closed to the public until the end of 2009. Baylor University staff, students and volunteers spent countless hours excavating the area during the past 30 years

The Waco Mammoth Site now includes a dig shelter that creates an atmosphere of an art gallery. Natural light floods into the shelter from all directions and a suspended walkway provides a stunning overhead view of the mammoths. The site also features a scenic trail complete with benches and rest areas where visitors can reflect on what life was like during the age of the mammoths.

Admission rates range from $5 to $7. Public hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays – Fridays & from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays. Congressional legislation is currently pending to create the Waco Mammoth National Monument and to include the site as a unit of the National Park Service.

Maybe you seek a claim to fame — something you can brag about at all those cocktail parties you attend. A good claim to fame might be to walk from the beginning to the end of a river. Now that would be quite an accomplishment on most rivers. For example, to travel from one end of the Colorado River to the other would be 1,450 miles.

Given that, maybe you’d prefer something more manageable. In that case, you might opt for the D River, which is 440 feet long and begins and ends in Lincoln City, Oregon. It flows from Devils Lake under U.S. 101 into the Pacific Ocean. The D River was once listed as the “shortest river in the world,” by the Guinness Book of World Records. Then, in 1989, Guinness said the Roe River in Montana was even shorter. Well, the Lincoln City people were not about to accept being second, so they re-measured it at “extreme high tide,” and claimed once again that their river was shorter.

Guinness must have been confused because after that it no longer listed a category for shortest river. But as you can see in this sign by U.S. 101, Lincoln City still insists its river is the shortest.

Overshadowed by its neighbors, upscale Palm Springs to the south and Joshua Tree National Park to the north east, Big Morongo Canyon Preserve is one of the ten largest cottonwood/willow oases in the California desert, a startling discovery surrounded by Mojave desert creosote and yucca. Nationally recognized for its migratory bird watching, this soggy riparian habitat is also home to numerous songbirds, great horned owls, raccoons, ringtail cats, coyotes, bobcats, red-tailed and Cooper’s hawks, and is frequented by bighorn sheep who come out of the barren high canyon hills to drink.Several trails of varied lengths lace through and around the boggy canyon bottom, revealing a burn recovery area from a 1992 fire, desert plants of the dry canyon sides, a boardwalk through the fresh-water marsh where plants have adapted to a life-time of living up to their knees in water, and a canyon trail skirting the marsh providing overlooks into the wetlands.From Interstate 10 north of Palm Springs, turn north on Highway 62 (or from Joshua Tree National Park, drive south on 62) to Morongo Valley. Turn east on East Drive to the signed entrance. Adequate parking and turn around for big rigs.

Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park on the Passaic River in Paterson, New Jersey is America’s newest national park. It features the second-most-powerful waterfall east of the Mississippi at the spot where Alexander Hamilton founded the country’s first planned industrial city.

According to the U.S. Geological Society, “the potential power of the Great Falls of the Passaic River so inspired Alexander Hamilton that he organized the Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures. Pierre L’Enfant, the planner of Washington, D.C., designed a complex three-tired system that harnessed the falls and supplied water power to several mills. The city of Paterson became a thriving industrial center known for the manufacture of silk and locomotive parts. Today, the old industrial complete has been partially restored.”

The creation of the new national park not only honors and preserves Paterson’s past but should also brighten its future. One federal agency has ranked Paterson as the most economically distressed city in the United States.

The park covers 35 acres, 15 miles west of New York City. The adjacent area is home to the largest and best example of early manufacturing mills in the United States with 18th, 19th, and 20th-century waterpower remnants. The 77-foot-tall falls engineered raceways and mills to form a complex that is unique in the United States.