Carolinas, Georgia & South Trips (Lonely Planet, 1st Edition) - Alex Leviton [22]
The Columns
A lovely 1883 Victorian choice on St Charles Ave in the Garden District with live music nightly, and jazz on Friday and Sunday. 504-899-9308; www.thecolumns.com; 3811 St Charles Ave, New Orleans; r $160-230
USEFUL WEBSITES
www.clarksdaletourism.com
www.neworleanscvb.com
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LINK YOUR TRIP www.lonelyplanet.com/trip-planner
TRIP
40 Blues Highway
55 Going to Graceland: Touring the Shrine of Elvis
56 Memphis Music Tour
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Return to beginning of chapter
TRIP 5
The Big Muddy: Down the Mississippi
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WHY GO She gave us Budweiser, Huck Finn and the blues. Meriwether Lewis kissed her goodbye. The Civil War streaked her with blood. Plantation owners loaded her with commerce. Slaves used her to escape. So make like Mark Twain and follow America’s most important river from Missouri to the Gulf of Mexico.
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The Mississippi River bubbles up in Minnesota, where it’s still fairly wild and narrow enough to swim across. But as it winds 2430 miles south toward New Orleans, it widens and becomes increasingly industrialized. In the Deep South, it is a commercial artery that continues to ferry fuel, goods and people to the Midwest and back again, just as it has for hundreds of years.
Your journey begins in Hannibal, Missouri where the great Mark Twain (1835–1910), aka Samuel Langhorne Clemens, grew up on the riverside. Missouri was a slave state back then, and Hannibal’s characters, scenery and politics would later inspire the fictional town of St Petersburg, home of the joyously conniving Tom Sawyer and his best friend, the mischievous hero, Huckleberry Finn. You’ll enjoy all the scenes of Tom’s greatest adventures – including the fence he did not paint and the cave where he and Becky Thatcher got lost. The Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum is a complex of seven buildings, including two homes Twain lived in and the home of Laura Hawkins, the true-life inspiration for Thatcher. July 4 weekend brings National Tom Sawyer Day, which features frog jumping and face-painting contests, among other events.
In his 20s, Twain was a commercial steamboat pilot on the Big Muddy, and he got to know all the bends and eddies, towns and outlaws, islands and sandbars that made Huck’s grand escape with Jim, the runaway slave, so true to life. In fact, when it was published in 1880, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was considered the first Great American Novel. But you don’t have to pilot a driftwood raft to honor that legacy; you can float the Mississippi on a dinner cruise aboard the Mark Twain Riverboat.
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TIME
4 – 6 days
DISTANCE
777 miles
BEST TIME TO GO
Apr – Jun
START
Hannibal, MO
END
New Orleans, LA
ALSO GOOD FOR
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Follow the river, and Hwy 61, for 100 miles further south and you’ll reach the Gateway Arch in St Louis. You’ve probably seen it on TV, but in person it is mind-bending. Its sheer size (630ft tall) and gentle arc against the (hopefully) blue sky may inspire you to laze on the grass and stare a while as sunlight flashes off the steel. In the arch’s basement you’ll find the Museum of Westward Expansion, chronicling Lewis & Clark’s expedition into the American West. Lewis famously left St Louis on horseback and connected with Clark further north in Illinois on May 14, 1804 before they rafted wild rivers and paved the way for countless western pioneers.
Make sure you don’t leave St Louis until you’ve grabbed a Bud at Anheuser-Busch Brewery. The tour through this cereal-smelling, Victorian-era multiplex is damned interesting. You’ll see the Clydesdales, and learn that at one time the brewery used Mississippi River water to make beer, and stored barrels in man-made caves dug into the cool riverbanks. Afterward you’ll be rewarded with two frosty ones.
From St Louis follow I-55S to Memphis, one of the river’s most soulful cities. Here you’ll find Graceland, Sun Studio, Stax Records and Beale Street.