Do you take a trip to the same place every year, or every other year? Does the travel to said place become boring and monotonous after the fourth time? Break up that drive next time by experiencing the value of the two-lane highways that parallel the interstates. Stop in the little towns that you always see the exit signs for and learn about them. It’ll be one of the best drives to, or from, said place.
I had the wonderful opportunity to do just this last week. Since 2010, every four years, my family reunion is held in Lebanon, Tennessee. My parents and I have also visited my cousins in Lebanon for Thanksgiving twice during this time. We know the route via I-40 very well. This year, we decided to take a long way home. We stayed an extra day and saw the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky. In 2014, a sinkhole swallowed eight vehicles. They repaired the room and one of the cars. The others are on display, and you can see how much damage they sustained.
On our drive home, we stopped at Loretta Lynn’s Ranch in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee. Her plantation home and museums are in a peaceful valley about ten miles north of I-40. You learn a lot about her, her father, and the movie, Coal Miner’s Daughter. Our next stop was the Louisiana Purchase State Park southeast of Blackton, Arkansas. This is a very small park, but you get a great walk through a head swamp to see where the mapping of the Louisiana Purchase began. Since my book is set in the swamps of Louisiana, it was a no-brainer to stop for a few minutes.
In Brinkley, we visited the Central Delta Depot Museum. Dee Dee told me wonderful stories about the items at the museum. A bonus for you research buffs, they have the Brinkley Argus archived in hardback books going back to at least the 1960s from what I saw. The actual newspaper pages are well preserved and available for you to peruse.
We drove through De Valls Bluff and Lonoke on our way to the Plantation Agriculture Museum in Scott. If you want to know anything about growing, picking, and baling cotton in Arkansas, this museum is for you. Nearby is Toltec Mounds Archeological State Park. Although we didn’t visit the mounds, I plan on seeing them in October when I return to Scott for the High Cotton on the Bayou Festival at the Scott Settlement. Put that on your calendar and come see me.
Seek out the back roads on your routine trips. You will see and learn so much more than what the interstates have to offer. History doesn’t write itself and the closer you get to the people who actually lived it, the better informed you’ll be. Plus, it could be the romp in the swamp you need to turn your routine trip into an extraordinary one.
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What I’m Reading – Many readers I know like to inquire what their favorite author is reading. At the end of each blog post, I’ll let you know what book is open on my Kindle. I hope my choice of reading material inspires you to read a variety of authors and topics. I’m currently reading book eight of the Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael series, The Devil’s Novice.
Bill’s Cajun House of Pleasure is available on Amazon, as an eBook, and in physical formats. It is also available on the Barnes and Noble website.