Mississippi Road Trip - 27 Dec 2005

Greetings from the heart of Delta Blues Country; well, in my case I'm sitting on the northern edge of it in Memphis. Yesterday, the 27th of Dec, my daughter and I took a day and drove to Clarksdale, MS, using Old Highway 61, as much as possible - which is most of the way between Walls and Lula, MS. We did get off track a couple of times as the road, while adequately marked, is easy to miss at times.For me, this was a trip back in time - almost 50 years to be exact. Of course 50 years ago I wasn't really looking at the scenery. It's a tad difficult to enjoy the local color when you'rerunning 61 north at 80 or so with somebody behind you bent on stopping you for the liquid refreshment you are carrying in the trunk of the car.But, I did recognize a few places, such as the Journey Inn and Court (think thats right) on the south side of Memphis near theTN/MS line. Most of the by-passed towns along Old 61 seem to have regressed into stop sign cross-roads with 2 or 3 houses - the map shows places such as Lake Cormorant, Newport, Evansville, but I didn't see much of what could be called a "town". Tunica proper hasn't changed a lot in 50 years - they do have a wonderful Veterans Memorial on the south side of town that appears to be well cared for and is worth a stop - there's a wide spot across the street where you can pull over safely.Most all of the old road is 2 lane, and narrow. But it is pretty much empty now that the current "New" U S 61 to the east is 4 lane divided for the folks in a hurry. The section between Grand Casino Parkway N and Casino Strip Blvd, in Clack, is 4 lane - for the convienence of the gambling tourists - but that's about it.We actually made nearly as good time on the old road as we would have on the new 61 - if you were just interested in driving from here to there you'd only loose maybe 15 minutes or so. No traffic for the most part, and what was out there was local and light. We almost went to Arkansas coming out of Lula. Wound up on U S 49 and turned right, when we should have turned left. Oh, well, I got a nice picture of a marker telling about the Henando DeSoto Memorial Bridge - did he REALLY get this far north?? However, we discovered our navigational error before arriving at the bridge (should have gone just a little further and took a picture of it) and returned to 61 and south to Clarksdale. When we entered Clarksdale on 161 (State Street) we didn't see any signs directing us to the Delta Blues Museum. It appears we should have taken Martin Luther King Blvd. (or you can take the 61 by-pass and turn onto MLK Blvd.), from 161. Turn onto Desoto Avenue and then onto 3rd Street. Blues Alley, Ground Zero Blues Club (Morgan Freeman's place) and several other attractions are just down 3rd on the left. We found it the easy way. There was an old lady standing by the side of the street waving to us. So we stopped, she wanted a birthday hug and $2.99 to buy herself a birthday cake. We asked her how to get to the museum; she told us to turn around, take a right at the stop sign, a left at the next stop sign and another left at a 3rd stop sign. Yeah, right!!!!!!!! So we gave her $3 forher "birthday cake" and followed her directions - right into the parking lot at the Delta Blues Musuem!!!!! I told my daughter we should have gone back and given the lady another $5!!!!The Delta Blues Museum is a great place for Blues enthusiasts to visit. Tons of photos with descriptive texts, guitars of famous blues players, like Pinetop Perkins and B. B. King (the "B. B."stands for "Blues Boy" by the way), and even Muddy Waters cabin from the plantation he was raised on. They also have a audio/videopresentation. ( http://www.deltabluesmuseum.com/ )
After we left the museum we traveled south on U. S. 49 for about a mile or so to Hopson Plantation, which is also the home of the Shack Up Inn B&B (B&B - Bed and Beer - the fellow told us they don't cook). Since this narrative is getting rather lenghty we'll just give you aURL to visit ( http://www.shackupinn.com/ ) for more information.Rates are reasonable at $45, $55, and $65 - but you need to make reservations way in advance as the place is very popular.We returned to Memphis via "new" 61 - a lot more stressfull, but at least the truck traffic wasn't all that heavy. So if you get down this way someday, take a quiet country drive down Old Highway 61. There's a lot of Blues History on this quiet and lonesome highway.