For Whom The Southern Belle Tolls [Dec 2010]

Vicksburg to Tullahoma

More than a week after my arriving home, it occurs to me that if I don't update the final leg of the journey soon, I'll forget anything worth saying about it.  And so, finally, here is the account of the last day.

I awoke in Vicksburg and, after updating the blog, returned my final room key of the trip. Comparatively, the last day would be a short one, so I had time to spend tooling around historic Vicksburg, following the Scenic Drive signs.  A wall of murals along the river allowed Frankie this photo op:

Along the scenic drive, I happened upon a restaurant I'd seen advertised in the hotel and stopped.  You see, on this ride home I hadn't found many roadside attractions, and certainly none akin to the “Largest Cross in the Western Hemisphere!” I'd found on my way through Groom, Texas on the drive west, so when presented with the opportunity to stop for lunch at a restaurant featured in 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, I took it.  The Walnut Hills Restaurant serves "southern plantation cuisine" in a round-table-boarding-house fashion similar to that of Miss Mary Bobo's in Lynchburg, TN, and though I'm not a fan of "southern food" as a rule, I find it hard to complain when it's done that well.

I took my seat at an a la carte table (an option not available at Bobo's to my knowledge) and was given my choice of the salads, meats, and veggies they were serving at the round table for a more reasonable one-traveler-alone, controlled portion price.  The cole slaw (my salad) may have been the best I've ever eaten.  The rest was pretty darned good as well.  And of course, when you eat plantation style, you drink tea.  I don't generally like tea, but even that was a pretty tasty and refreshing treat after a few hours photographing rats by murals in the morning sun.

After lunch, I completed the scenic circuit and continued home, through the rest of Mississippi, crossing Alabama, and into Tennessee.  These states did not offer much in the way of new exploration to me as they are so close to home as to have been visited many times, and the flora and fauna of the American South is relatively constant, so after lunch the day consisted mostly of driving through the rain which plagued all three states and limiting stops to rest areas and gas stations on the continuing search to complete the keychain-from-every-state collection I was creating for both myself and my goddaughter.

I arrived at home not late in the evening and was greeted almost immediately with company ready to welcome me back.  A lot had happened in the small town while I was gone and I would hear much about it in the coming days.  I would also be staying in the house which for the last several months has been under renovation and which has not yet been connected via cable or internet to the rest of the world.  And so this update would have to wait.

When I finished the drive west in 2006, I completed the posts of the trip with an audit or sorts -- a record of what was spent and what was learned along the way.  I do plan to share a similar audit of this experience, but that will be the next post.  This one, at least, got me home.

Abilene to Vicksburg

This morning in Vicksburg, Mississippi I have an earlier checkout than at other stops and slept later in the first truly comfortable bed of the trip.  Fortunately, there is not much to tell about yesterday's leg.

The predetermined route and the GPS were in agreement as I followed Interstate 20 east through the remainder of Texas and across Louisiana into Mississippi.  I'd had high hopes for my first visit to Louisiana, even knowing that the more famed portions were closer to the gulf than I'd be traveling.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  There were still hours to be driven getting out of Texas.

Now everybody knows that Texas is a rather large state, but it's the actual driving of it that does the convincing.  Using mile markers to best make my point, you can travel north to south across Tennessee in roughly 180 miles, with Chattanooga around exit 178.  The Louisiana panhandle, west to east, chimes in at a similar number, perhaps closer to 190 miles from border to border.  Texas, however, tops a whopping 640 miles from west to east.  In most of the country, you can (and today I will) cross through three states with that much wear on the tires.

But exiting Texas was no more thrilling than entering it and the only stop I made, apart from the requisite stops for gas, was for lunch at a BBQ and Fried Pie shop in Canton called Baker's Ribs.  Because when you're in Texas, that's what you eat.  Ribs.  And they were pretty darned good.

It seemed a lifetime before the Louisiana state line appeared and the sign marking it was one of the last things I saw for the next three hours.  Interstate 20 through the panhandle is difficult to describe because for a short while the road which carves through thick, lush greenery is rather pretty but as the hours drag on and the view does not open up or change, it does become monotonous.  A mountain, a lake, or a billboard for some THING would have been welcome. (I did, by the way, pay my dollar to solve the mystery of the desert in Arizona, answering the question of "The Thing"). In fact, I had to hunt to find the convenience store or gas station which would sell me the requisite souvenir key chain before I left the state.  Sadly, that stop, when found, was no exciting backdrop for Frank Sinatrat, who failed to find a photo op in the day.

Shortly after sundown I reached Vicksburg, barely across the state line in Mississippi.  Though I had no particular plans to spend time in the city before hitting the road again, I do have the time to spare as the drive home to my own bed tonight should be roughly 7 hours, give or take.   And, darn it, Frankie needs a photo!