Highway 61

Highway 61 has blues embedded deep into its routes, Bob Dylan even wrote a album about it. About a half hour drive south from Memphis you come across a tourist info centre with a bluesy neon sign on top. It opened in 2012 and a great place to pick up some info about the route. Reading through everything while eating our sandwiches in the back of the car we decided Clarksdale would be our first stop.

We arrived in Clarksdale and drove around the small town where blues music is thick on the ground. Morgan Freeman owns and operates the popular Ground Zero Blues club; we decided that we would definitely be paying a visit later on that evening, it was Saturday after all. We found a Maccy D’s to steal the wifi to look for a place to stay and came across ‘The Shack Inn,’ it was a bit more than what we usually spend per night but the thought of not having to stay in a crappy motel made me very excited, so did its reviews. Luckily they had a spare shack for us called Northwest. It was quite a basic room for a shack I discovered but it was the only one left so happy we stayed. At the end of the day you are staying in a shack but its more of the ambience and people that you are paying for. Everyone is friendly and its just a very cool and chilled out place to be. The shacks are right by the Hopson Plantation, which is definitely worth a visit even if you don’t stay. Amazingly the plantation turns into a bar at 5pm… I was too excited to be able to walk to a bar it was untrue. Every Saturday you can buy a platter of Crawfish; Crawfish is exactly the same as Crayfish but just a Southern way spelling it. The guy showed us how to de-shell them (there is an actual technique), we mastered this along and enjoyed them with a couple from Arkanas we met called Danni and Matt. The crawfish was spicy and delicious and as the guy said ‘if it ain’t spicy it ain’t worth eatin.’ After more beers and a few sips of the crawfish guy’s uncles home brewed 100 proof moonshine, we decided to take the free limo service to Ground Zero blues club. The inside of the club is great, it ever has food and pool tables. I think we tried some of the deep fried okra or green tomatos but I cannot really remember. Needless to say we woke up the next day in a bad way and did nothing apart from sleep, drove through a storm to get a chilli dog and then went back to bed.

Highway 61 for the most part is very flat farmland so is a nice relaxing drive. We drove through a couple more of the stops Greenville, Rolling Fork but did not stop. From Vicksburg we drove half hour East to Jackson. There wasn’t much to do in Jackson apart from go to a thrift shop where I picked up 2 x shoes for $3 each and a super cool glass that I now use for my wine/beer/whiskey. We did however to go Mayflower Café and had some lunch, definitely worth a stop. Although I had two lots of vegetables with my chicken fried steak, the butter beans were almost grey and the aubergine was surprise surprise deep-fried…. What I wouldn’t do to eat some fresh vegetables!!

The next day we got back on the 61 and stopped quickly in both Port Gibson ‘too beautiful to burn’ back in the war and Jefferson County, both very pretty. A short drive took us to Natchez, an historical town with 500 listed buildings. My mum would love it here. We decided to stay overnight in just outside of town, as they were all quite expensive in the town. We enjoyed a beer and sat outside looking over the Mississippi river and watched the sunset. The next day we did the walks to see all the houses, which was very pleasant, it was also sunny. We had lunch at one of the large houses known as ‘Stanton House’ out in the garden. For $10 we had a spicy shrimp and okra soup, an AMAZING salad and a grilled chicken sandwich, definitely enjoyed all of it. So great to have a salad which was not the standard iceberg you get a lot of here.

Later that day we drove over the Mississippi Bridge and into Louisiana. By this point we decided to go to SXSW festival for the weekend. We stopped in the state tourist office and loads of info. I would recommend going in these whenever you go into a new state, they are wonderfully helpful in there. As we needed to be in Austin the day after we stopped for the night in Lake Charles. Lake Charles had a nice waterfront but there was nothing on it. I really think they could do with some bars or anything along there, as it is their main feature. There was a historical district we walked around but after the Natchez it just didn’t seem all that. We decided to go back to the motel, get a pizza and have some beers. We will be doing a lot of Louisiana but that will be after Texas.

SXSW this weekend and now have two weeks accommodation booked for Austin, Texas. I have heard nothing but great things about Austin and am very excited!

It’s totally fine to sample whiskey at 11:30am

We drove over the Cherokee mountains over to Knoxville, from Knoxville we headed to a small town called Manchester the ‘coffee county’. We loved manchester as it was small and peaceful, needless to stay we stayed 3 nights rather than our usual 1-2.

In the morning we woke up and went to Forkes national park and enjoyed walking around the trails and waterfalls. After a well earned walk decided to go to the coffee cafe and sample their homemade pies and flavoured coffee. The special of the day was Carmel coffee, which was served on the side of my key lime pie, both delicious! We have been literally desperate for fresh vegetables… I will pay a good amount of money for a non-deep fried or over boiled vegetable (still have not found any yet). We read of a little place called Emma’s family Restaurant. It was awesome, not exactly the veg I was after but good enough. $7.99 for a buffet style dinner of all home cooked food… I do not know how they can sell it for so cheap. Needless to say we went home happy and very full!

We ended up in Manchester as it was close to Lynchburg, the home of Jack Daniels. We went to three distilleries in two glorious days.

1. Jack Daniels Distillery, Lynchburg
JD’s is a well oiled machine in a tiny town of 400 people who all receive a pint of JD from the company every month (lucky them). We paid the $10 each for the sampling tour and pleased to see our guide was the actual guy who is on the London underground posters, a very pleasant surprise. The tour was a good pace, interesting and our guide was happy to talk and answer any questions. The sampling at the end was actually pleasant, I never thought I would enjoy drinking straight whiskey so much. He described the way the flavour hits your mouth and he was spot on. A very enjoyable tour. Needless to say we bought two bottle of undistilled rye (aka moonshine), only 13,700 are being sold EVER and not available in the UK whoop.

2. Prichards’s Distillery, Kelso
Prichard’s make rum and whiskey, it’s not sold in the UK yet but hopefully will soon as it was delicious. They bought an old high school gym a few years ago and is not their warehouse. Only a handful of people work there and is a much much smaller scale than JD. While having the tour we saw two people sat in the corner hand labelling every bottle. At the end we were able to sample everything with no limitations, this was very fun but I definitely felt it when leaving, John had to drive. Also when we told the women where we were from she took a photo of us and put it on their Facebook, which was quite warming how happy they were to visit them. we bought a bottle of Sweet Lucy and were on our way.

3. The George Dickel Distillery, Lynchburg
George Dickel Whisky (that is not a spelling mistake, he wanted to spell it that way). Unfortunately the sample tours started the following week but had a very interesting tour anyway. The distillery is definitely the ‘mama’ bear of the three). Only 25 people work there and feels like a family run company. This is a free tour and definitely worth going on.

I learnt quite an interesting fact/tip while on the tours. The fumes released from distill ing whiskey turns the trees around the area black. It does it harm the trees it just feeds a type of fungus that then grows all over it, it is actually eerily beautiful. So if you are ever walking off trail and come across black trees get back on the trail quick… Moonshiners do not like people stepping on to their property.

We’re going to Graceland, Graceland, Memphis Tennessee!!

I really wanted to love Nashville. The country music scene is massive, which I already knew, but I didn’t realise how much I generally dislike country music. Don’t get me wrong I don’t mind it from time to time but not every second. If every day! It is also a very spread out town and even if you stay in the centre (in a over priced motel/hotel) it still requires you to drive around as there is no public transport. We opted to stay a couple of miles out and save ourselves the cash.

Walking down the main downtown Boulevard was cool but packed with middle-aged people, very commercialised, and no one similar to us and our age (Bon Jovi was playing that evening so maybe that didn’t help). We went for a drink in one of the bars (it was happy hour after all), but soon gave up as they started to play Bon Jovi. We found out about a few dive bars over the west side so headed over to ‘Losers’ which was on a strip with other dive bars so we instantly felt right at home. I blame New York For my new love of dive bars. The amount of reviews I have read about dive bars being dirty and having the wrong crowds, they are retarded. They are allied DIVE-bars for a reason. They are dirty, the toilets are rank, they smell of cigarettes and beer but play great music (I forgave them for playing country as it was a cool bar), attract a diverse crowd, the drinks are cheap, you meet interesting people, also the barmaid/man is always chatty and is happy to be there. We decided not to stay another night but head West to Memphis.

Driving the 240 miles for to Memphis, suddenly the radio misusing on the radio from country to old rock… Johnny Cash, Elvis, Fleetwood Mac, Talking Heads… The list goes on, it was bliss. We stayed in West Memphis, just over the Mississippi River in Arkansas state. There was a massive casino right next to us, it was my first time in a casino that evening. So many people with massive gambling issues.

Memphis is so much better than Nashville, in my opinion. The main strip Beale Street was similar to Nashville, but not as commercialised and had a better range of people (including people our age). My favourite tourist spot was visiting Elvis’s Graceland, definitely worth a visit. A nice tour around his mansion, I did not realise he has sold over a billion records! There was loads of other areas to visit but my other favourite was his collection of cars. He has some amazing cars and it got me excited which is impressive as I am not even into them. A short drive from Graceland took us to Sun Studio ‘the birthplace of rock n roll’. you can pay $20 for the tour but in have been to Metropolis, Londons and Electric Lady NYC so did not feel the need to do the whole ‘Johnny Cash sat there’ etc etc, if you have never been to a studio it would be worth paying for. After this we went to the botanical gardens as it was a sunny day, totally found out after we were supposed to pay (Botanical gardens I will pay next time I am in Memphis).

From Memphis we literally did not know which direction we wanted to aim for, but then we spotted Highway 61 leading south to our 7th state Mississippi which has a lot of blues history.

The Road to Nowhere

From Richmond we swiftly drove south to Roanoke, Virginia. This was a lovely small town by the supposedly beautiful Blue Ridge Parkway. Unfortunately due to bad weather a lot of the road was closed so we instead opted for the Blue Ridge Roanoke Mountain Trail. After around a mile into a 5 mile trek we took a wrong turn. It took us about an hour and a half to realise this and head back, so it actually turned in to a 9 mile trek! Still it was a lovely walk through the forest although it did remind me of a scene from Deliverance. That evening we stopped in at Texas Tavern, a burger and hotdog joint which has not changed since the 1920’s, super cheap and delicious.

We decided to head south to Winston-Salem, North Caroline, for an evening. We stayed in a crappy motel (standard) and went for an amazing BBQ. To walk off the food we drove over to Old Salem, this part of Winston-Salem is literally like going back in time, people were even walking around in full costume from the 1890’s time period. A quick walk from here took us to the downtown art district, which I must say was disappointing so we headed back to the car.

From here we had a 4 hour drive west, the final hour was through beautiful snowy mountains, which definitely meant we were coming into old Native Indian territory of Cherokee. At this point we were starving so made a quick stop into Na-Bers Drive-In for some cheap America fare and a milkshake… YUM. From here we drove a few miles to Bryson City. I definitely would not call this a city, more of a very small village, that being said it sure was very pretty. We drove through here and up to the ‘Road to Nowhere’. This is a 6-7 mile stretch of road which leads to a 1/4 mile tunnel through the mountains. The road was stopped due to dangerous minerals found and left incomplete. It was eerily quiet and a beautiful drive. Walking through the tunnel was a bit scary but worth it.

An 8 mile drive took us back to Cherokee. Is must be a popular camping place in the summer, but this time of year it is a quiet, sad and unusual town just waiting for the crowds to be drawn in. Secretary I wanted real Native American Indian families to be wondering around, but sadly this was not the case.