Mike guessed Tupelo to be the size of Muskegon or Bay City. He was right. Google told us Tupelo had over 38,000 people. When Elvis lived here, it was half that.
On Friday we drove to Red Bay, Alabama (about an hour away) for some RV business. On our way back, while following our route on our tablet, I noticed we were going to intersect with the Natchez Trace Parkway and I knew it ran through Tupelo so we got on it. What a treasure! Administered by the National Park Service, the 444 mile, two-lane road stretches from Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee. There is no fee or toll to drive it. The word "scenic" should be in its name. There are no billboards, few power lines, no McDonald's every couple of miles and no gas stations. (you can find all those things in the towns the parkway goes by if you get off). It is just nature, in all its beauty. The signs are the kind made out of wood (as most are in our national parks) indicating a hiking trail, or overlook. We stopped to look at some ancient Indian burial mounds. This is a quote from the visitor center brochure:
"The Old Trace was first trod by buffalo, then American Indians. In the early 1800's, it was the main return route for Ohio Valley traders, who, rather than fight the Mississippi currents, sold their flatboats for the value of their timber in Natchez and walked home via the Old Trace." Think of that - walking over 400 miles!
Friday night we headed to downtown Tupelo. When a city has all the commercial growth outside of downtown, it is always interesting to see if the actual town area is still vibrant and active or filled with vacant storefronts. Plus when I asked a grocery store clerk for restaurant recommendations, all she gave me were the chain places by the mall (Applebee's, Chili's, Logan's, etc.) And it seems a little snobbish to say, "We don't eat at chain restaurants" when you don't have the time to explain the whole "meandering" thing!
We walked right into a Chili Fest downtown. For the price of admission, we got a bowl of chili, a pop, and two tickets to vote on the best chili at the numerous different booths that handed out samples. The usual service organizations had booths, along with schools, the library and the chamber, with many of them handing out freebies. We got Memphis Grizzlies sunglasses from a radio station booth. And there was . . . surprise, surprise . . . live music! I cast my vote (with my ticket) for best chili to the booth that had white chicken chili. Mike did not let his palate determine his vote. Instead, he was taken with a little 5 or 6 year old girl. She was wearing an Ole Miss cheerleading outfit, had "Ole Miss" painted on her cheek and her long brown hair tied up with red, white and blue ribbons. She was manning a booth with her parents and half the booth was Ole Miss and half was Mississippi State. Mike asked her which bucket should he put his ticket in and she handed him her Ole Miss bucket. (nobody can say I am the only one who misses our grandchildren while we travel!)
Saturday was a total day off. Except for laundry and preparing meals, I spent the day on the couch with my foot propped on pillows, with ice packs. Mike watched college football from dawn until after dusk, sitting outside in shorts and a t-shirt.
Speaking of football, Tupelo is mid-way between the two main universities of Mississippi - Ole Miss in Oxford to the west and Mississippi State in Starkville to the south. Both schools are big news right now as their football teams are having terrific seasons. Sunday we took the west route and went to the University of Mississippi. We enjoyed the drive around the tree-lined campus with stately brick buildings. Downtown Oxford was charming. The county courthouse sits in the center and the shops and restaurants and bookstores form a square around it. We walked around the square and ate at Proud Larry's. "Hotty Totty", the Ole Miss fight song, was on display everywhere.
The courthouse looked like the one in the movie, "A Time To Kill", based on the novel of the same name by native son, John Grisham. The other famous writer from Oxford is Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner. His home is now owned by the university and is a museum, just several blocks from downtown.
We had put it off long enough, so we went to Elvis' birthplace after getting back from Oxford. There is a visitor center and gift shop along with the house he was born in and the church he attended. We didn't pay for tickets as we could walk right up to the house, just couldn't go in, which was OK with us.
Elvis came from very humble beginnings. A true rags to riches story. His family moved to Memphis when he was 13. In 1956, two years after his first recording at Sun Studios, Elvis returned to Tupelo a huge star. He performed a homecoming concert in front of 22,000.
Again, because we aren't big Elvis fans, we didn't go to the creek where he swam, or the drive-in diner he used to eat at, or the downtown hardware store where he got his first guitar - all things on the Elvis in Tupelo suggested self tour!
Monday we kept our eye on the weather and decided we had time for the southern drive to Mississippi State University in Starkville. It was strange seeing signs for "MSU" as we so associate those initials with Michigan State University. The campus was nice, more modern, not quite the character of Ole Miss.
Sometimes we find our local places to eat by asking someone. Sometimes we are walking around and just stop in, as with Proud Larry's. And sometimes we look online, which is how we found The Little Dooey - with the Around Me app on my phone. It was a blind pick, a few blocks from campus, but what a treat! They had a walk-up counter to place your order (BBQ pork is the specialty) and then we had a choice of inside booths or a covered outside deck. We chose to sit outside. At one end was a TV replaying the Miss State/Auburn game from Saturday. We wondered if they would be replaying it if Miss State lost! At our end, instrumental blues music was coming out of the speakers. This place oozed atmosphere and the food was delicious. We bought another bottle of BBQ sauce to add to our growing collection!
The Little Dooey had a sign up that said they were closing at 2:30 due to weather. I asked if it was because of thunderstorms and the waitress said, "No, because of possible tornadoes". We drove back to Tupelo under sunny skies, but 1/2 hour after battening down our hatches on the RV, (bringing in our slides, putting outdoor chairs away, closing vents and lowering antenna and satellite) the storm hit. It wasn't as bad as we thought it was going to be, but a tornado went through this area last April so they take the watches and warnings very seriously.
Another sighting of odd things - A restaurant in Tupelo advertised "Asian BBQ Tacos". They should team up with the "Catfish Chicken Chinese" place in Memphis. And the town of West Point, Mississippi proudly proclaimed that it was a "retirement community". We said, "What is that, and would you want to aspire to be that?"
We said goodbye to Tupelo on Tuesday and drove 4 hours east to Talladega, Alabama. I couldn't get a picture of the "Welcome to Alabama" sign when we crossed the state line because it was raining so hard. I thought I could get it at the Welcome Center. The people of Alabama must not think you need a welcome if you are coming from Mississippi as there was no welcome center. In fact, we traveled 75 miles on the interstate and never even passed a rest stop. We know this because we would have stopped!
We passed lots of cotton fields. Some still had cotton on the branches, some the fields were cleared. We have seen round rolls of hay, but now we were seeing rolls of cotton the same size.
I was working on a crossword puzzle while we were driving today (or I should say Mike was driving) and one of the clues was" a six-letter word for Elvis' hometown". Hey - I would have gotten that even without having just left Tupelo!
I never get tired of having people say "Yes, Ma'am" or "No, Ma'am" or "Can I help ya'all?" or "Thank y'all" in that southern drawl. And they really have it in Mississippi and Alabama.
I knew we were getting close to the Talladega Speedway when I started seeing pickup after pickup on the side of the road selling firewood. I'm not talking about a plastic wrapped bundle you get at gas stations or campgrounds. This is wheelbarrow loads and stacks as tall as I am.
We are here, camping right outside turn 3, until Monday. It is dry camping - no water, sewer or electric hook-ups. But before you feel sorry for us, we run the generator for power, filled our water holding tank in Tupelo and emptied our sewer holding tank there, too. It's not quite roughing it! We are looking forward to having Mike's Uncle John and Aunt Leslie join us for the weekend.
This ends our sightseeing for 2014. From here we go to Florida where we have a rental spot in Zephyrhills for the winter. As always, we are grateful for the blessing of being able to see more of our beautiful, interesting country. As it says in Ecclesiastes, chapter 3 - "To everything there is a season. . "
We are thankful for this season in our lives.
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