Memphis sits on the Mississippi, a short ride across the bridge to Arkansas. At first, we were just going to cross over, get out of the car so our feet touched soil and then return. But, is this really in the definition of "visiting" a state? Does that fulfill the rules? (who writes these rules?)
Next thing I knew the trip planner had us driving to Little Rock ( a mere 150 miles -- like driving up to Schenectady) and Hot Springs--why not, it was just a little further. This was our biggest mileage day--400 miles, but well worth it.
After visiting Little Rock Central High School and Hot Springs National Park, we ended our day back on the Mississippi Delta Trail.
Gary also has a goal of visiting all 393 sites under the National Park system which includes 58 National Parks, 100 National Monuments, as well as National Historic Sites. Not quite sure what the visit tally is on that list, but here are some of the other great places we visited that I haven't mentioned in my previous post:
- World War II Museum in New Orleans - Why this museum in New Orleans? The Higgins boat, used in D-Day invasion and throughout the Pacific campaign, was a product of New Orleans and based on the shallow, bayou boat design.
- Beauvoir, Biloxi, MS - Jefferson Davis' house where he wrote his memoirs. House was damaged extensively in Katrina, but has been restored. Site also includes the Jefferson Davis Presidential Library....and when was he president?! One woman in our tour group asked about the "presidential china."
- Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail - commemorating the three day voting rights march in 1965 and Bloody Sunday on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.
- Tuskegee Institute - the agricultural and technical institute founded by Booker T. Washington with George Washington Carver as its most famous professor and researcher.
- Tuskegee Airmen Museum - at Moton Field - The place where the first all black airmen unit that served in WWII in the still segregated Armed Forces began their training.
- Horseshoe Bend National Historic Site - where Andrew Jackson massacred the Creek Indians
- Elvis birthplace in Tupelo - a two room house on the wrong side of the tracks.
- Natchez Trace Parkway in Tupelo - preserving the old Natchez trail, where in the 1800's before steam ship travel, the Caintucks (from Kentucky) sent riverboats with goods down the Mississippi and then walked back the Natchez Trace to return North.
- Shiloh Battlefield - a bloody victory for General Grant over the rebels in a two day battle that marked the beginning of the campaign to secure the railway lines that would eventually split the confederacy
- Tupelo Battlefield in Corinth, Ms-- Confederates pulled back from Shiloh to Corinth to fight again four months later
- the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail - we played 2 of the 15 courses , including Fighting Joe Wheeler Course (named after a Confederate commander) in Muscle Shoals and Grand National in Opelika.
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