Days 11, 12 and 13 - On The Road Home

Cotton Field

We started our 3-day driving home trip on Sunday, so this will be our last post as we don't have any other sightseeing planned. However on the way to Memphis to drop Steve and Megan off at the airport, we came across some cotton fields being picked and decided to take some photos.

In the first picture, the cotton field has already been sprayed to kill the green leaves, leaving just the brown stalk and cotton balls. Although not very visible, you can see the round yellow "modules" of wrapped cotton that the cotton picker leaves (center of photo).

Cotton Picker

The second picture is a close-up of the "cotton-picking" machine. Notice the white dust of cotton fiber in the air. There was also cotton fiber all along the roadside.

Day 10 – Delta Hot Tamale Festival

Cooking Pot With Hot Tamale Bundles

Hot tamale y’all.

Today is the day we have been waiting for – the Delta Hot Tamale Festival in Greenville, MS!!! While the festival itself isn’t old – only in its fourth year – the tradition of the Delta hot tamale dates back for many years, at least to the early part of the 20th century. And so how does a Delta tamale different from its Mexican counterpart? First, it is smaller in size and hence sold generally in a bundle of 6, or at least that is how it was sold at the festival. Second, it is made using cornmeal, a southern staple, instead of masa. I’m not sure of the exact distinction here but I believe masa is whiter and more finely ground where cornmeal is more yellow and a bit more grainy. Taste wise, they are similar. Lastly the Delta tamale is generally simmered in a kind of spicy broth where the Mexican version is either steamed or fried.

18 Delta Tamales

As you can see in the photo, the Delta hot tamale is also cooked in a corn shuck (or corn husk where I come from) and the meat used is similar to the Mexican version, but the Delta version is maybe a bit spicier. We sampled about a half a dozen tamales from different vendors and interestingly enough, our favorite ones were the same as the judges. The beef tamale from Hot Tamale Heaven and the non-beef, made using spinach, from Jodie’s. Both were winners of the contest in past years.

Miss Hot Tamale (winner on the right)

The festival was well attended with maybe as many as twenty thousand people on hand. It covered several blocks in downtown Greenville and a large park at the base of the Mississippi River levy that protects the town. There was a celebrity tamale cooking contest, a Miss Hot Tamale contest, a hot tamale eating contest – 29 tamales in five minutes won – a judging of the best tamales and lots of music all around. The Miss Hot Tamale contest was limited to high school girls and each had to make a dress featuring corn shucks and the picture shows the three finalists.

Enjoying the Tamales (Judy, Jeanne, John, Megan and Steve)

While Claude, Megan's dad worked at the beer booth (not drinking, selling as part of a fund raised for the festival itself), the rest of us settled down on a grassy spot in the park to enjoy the tamales. Many thanks to Steve for waiting over an hour in line to get the ones from Jodie’s so we could taste the overall champion. Each of the six versions we tried were slightly different, mainly in the spices used, but all were very good. As you can see from the photos, it was a nice sunny day for the festival.

Day 9 – Gin and Steak

Modern Cotton Gin

Cotton used to be king in the Mississippi Delta and even if its importance is somewhat reduced today, it is still very important to the region. Mid-October is very late in the crop cycle,  but we did see a few cotton fields on our trip through Mississippi; most fields had already been picked and were being tilled and prepped for planting of next years crop in the spring. While the majority of the cotton crop had been picked, a lot of it still hadn’t been processed and Claude arranged for Steve and me to tour the local cotton gin. A gin these days is a pretty sophisticated operation with a lot specialized machinery. In the photo you can see the actual gin. It feeds raw cotton in from the top and the cotton seeds are separated out and retained in the bottom part of the machine. After the seeds are separated, the cotton is then automatically passed on to other equipment which cleans it, compresses it and ultimately bales and wraps it in plastic for shipment.

Two Cotton Bales

The economics of the cotton gin process are also interesting. All the cotton farmer has to do is grow the cotton, pick it - all done mechanically - and wrap it into a “module.” Modules can be cylindrical shaped or larger tractor trailer sized units. The gin picks up the modules and processes the cotton, all at no cost to the farmer. It seems crazy that they do it for free, but it works because the gin makes its money from selling the cotton seed, which is used in products such as Crisco and also other by-products of the process. This particular gin produces a cotton bale about every two minutes. Each bale weighs between 460 and 500 pounds.

Doe's Eat Place

By the way, in case you were wondering, the boll weevil which caused so much damage to the U.S. cotton crop in the 1920s and 30s has been completely eradicated in every state except for the southern part of Texas, but really only during the last 20 or 30 years.

Now for the steak part of the story. We had dinner at Doe’s Eat Place, a legendary local place in Greenville which serves the best steaks you can imagine. It is not in the best part of town and in fact has its own guard to keep and eye on parked cars and the patrons, but it was well worth a visit. Easily among the top steaks I have ever had. Of course their 2 to 3 pound Porterhouse is more than any one person should be eating, so we shared 2 among the seven of us and still had leftover steak. Amazing!

Day 8 – The Trip to Greenville

Posing with Kermit the Frog

We started the day with a short 50-minute drive from Batesville, MS to the Memphis airport to pick up Megan and Steve and then stopped for lunch at Leonard’s Pit Barbecue in Memphis. Thursday is their all-you-can-eat rib buffet and the meal was great. The buffet allows you to answer the age-old question of which is better, dry rub versus wet? In truth it doesn’t matter as both styles were fantastic. We then drove approximately 150 miles south to Greenville, MS in about 3 hours. We did make one stop in Leland, MS to tour the Jim Henson Museum. This was Jim Henson’s boyhood home and also the birthplace of Kermit the Frog as the creek where Jim Henson played with frogs as a young boy is just behind the home. The museum isn’t big but it does give you a chance to get your photo made with Kermit.

Judy, Claude, Megan, Steve, Jeanne and John

In the evening we attended the opening event of the Hot Tamale festival which was the welcome gala of the Literary/Culinary Mash-up, which brings together some of the South’s most influential writers and chefs. In attendance were Jeanne and myself, Steve and Megan, Megan’s parents Claude and Judy and Megan’s sister, Kathryn. The location of the gala was a former cotton gin which was recently turned into an event center, but you can still see remnants from the former mill structure.

Jeanne and Roy Blunt, Jr.

The food at the gala was excellent but Jeanne’s favorite moment was meeting Roy Blunt, Jr. I suppose you would call Roy a Southern humorist and author, but we know him best from the NPR radio program, “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!” And to make the night even better, when we went in to for dinner, we ended up sitting right next to Roy. It's not stalking if it's by accident, right?

Day 7 – Dawgs and Rebs Day

Natchez Trace trail

Today’s agenda was a trip though history and then visits to the top two universities in Mississippi – Mississippi State and Ole Miss. We started the history portion of the agenda at the Natchez Trace Visitor Center in Tupelo and drove south on 60 miles of the 444-mile Natchez Trace Parkway which runs from Natchez to Nashville. The parkway served as an ancient trail for the American Indian and later it was used by the “Kaintucks” who walked home after taking flatboats with goods down the Mississippi River to New Orleans and Natchez. Once the steamboat came into usage on the river in the early 1800s, the need to walk home was eliminated and the trail is now preserved by the National Park Service. For us, it was a very nice drive just seeing nature with no signs, stores, guardrails or signs of life other than an occasional car. It was a very enjoyable drive and we stopped to see Indian mounds and to walk a portion of the historic Natchez Trace trail, as had been done for thousands of years. Very cool.

Needs More Cowbell!!!

Once off the parkway, we went to Starkville to tour the Mississippi State campus. As you can see, I’m wearing my Dawgs shirt in front of the football stadium. The campus is very beautiful and the weather couldn’t have been any better. Had a great BBQ brisket sandwich lunch at Little Dooey (recommended by Megan) and headed back north to Oxford.

First stop in Oxford was Rowan Oak, the home of William Faulkner and where he wrote many of his great novels. The house is exactly how you would picture a great house in the south in the 1930s. There was no driveway up to the house, which dates back to antebellum time and stands in the middle of a strand of old cedar trees.

Rowan Oak

The Rowan Oak property backs up to the Ole Miss campus which has a history of its own, some good and some bad. The admission of James Meredith in 1962 to the formerly segregated university was one of the flashpoints of the civil rights movement, but today we were reminded more of their sports history as we drove on Manning Drive to see the stadium and “the grove” where the campus celebrates before big games. The town of Oxford is a cute small town with its courthouse square surrounded by restaurants and we especially liked Square Books, the old kind of bookstore that you can't find anymore.

Day 6 – Whiskey and Tupelo

Jack Daniel's Distillery

Today we drove south on our way to Tupelo, MS. We made our first stop in Lynchburg to tour the Jack Daniel’s distillery. It was interesting tour and the weather was fantastic but because we didn’t get to see that much on the tour, it wasn’t actually all that informative. Maybe it was just our bad luck, but the distillery building was closed today due to some issue with them working on the roofing and then we hit the specialty bottling line during their lunch break so we didn’t see that line in operation either. The main bottling line is two miles away and not included in the tour. Likewise they don’t include their storage area so you don’t get to see the casks where the whiskey is stored with it is being aged (4 to 7 years). The only whiskey that we actually saw was what they sold in their factory store. 

Jack on the rocks

That said, we did see where they burned the ricks of wood to create the specialty charcoal that they use to uniquely filter their whiskey and the cave where their spring water comes from, so we did see some behind the scenes things. We also got our photo taken with "Jack on the rock". If you look closely behind us you can see the cave where the spring water comes to make all their whiskey. One other thing of interest - the statue makes Jack seem to be about 5'10". He was really only 5'2", so your stature does apparently grow with fame.

Birthplace of Elvis (house on the left)

From Lynchburg we drove through Huntsville, AL, on our way to Tupelo, MS. Today was mostly non-interstate driving so not really the most relaxing. We got to Tupelo in time to tour the birthplace of Elvis Presley. Vernon Presley, Elvis’ father, borrowed money and built the house before Elvis was born. It is a “shotgun” style house with only two rooms, no heat and no indoor plumbing. Of course times were tough for the Presleys and they lost the house when Elvis was about three. They moved several times in Tupelo before relocating to Memphis when Elvis was thirteen.

Days 4 & 5 – Nashville

The Parthenon (Athens of the South)

We spent Sunday and Monday with family in Nashville but also took a little time to make a short trip into the downtown Nashville area, mainly to see the Vanderbilt Medical Center where our niece is working. While there we drove through the Vanderbilt campus, Centennial Park to see the Parthenon, and then drove by other sights such as Music Row, the Musica statue and the Tennessee State Capitol Building. We had seen most of these sights in the past but hadn't been back for at least 20 years.

Day 3 – Mammoth Cave National Park

Wigwam Village Motel

We made the short drive from where we were staying in Horse Cave to Mammoth Cave, passing through Cave City with its myriad of tourist attractions. The first photo attached is one of Wigwam Village, which has a special significance to me as I stayed there with my family probably sometime in the mid to late 1950s, in the motel’s hay day. This was pre-Interstate highways so the motel was then located on the main road, Highway 31W. I only have vague recollections of staying there but it was nice to see that it is still in business after all these years.

Frozen Niagara

When we arrived at Mammoth Cave, we found that almost all the tours were sold out for the day, but fortunately we had bought our tour on-line days before where there was a complete selection available. We took the “Domes and Dripstones” tour, which lasts for 2 hours and includes the Frozen Niagara tour. The view of Frozen Niagara is probably the highlight of the Mammoth Cave adventure for those not taking the more strenuous tours. By strenuous I mean a 4-hour tour with a lot of climbing and specifically for people in great physical shape. As it was, our tour was moderately strenuous and starts with a descent down 250 steps into the depths of the cave. That is no easy feat and requires the avoidance of “wishing rocks.” Wishing rocks, as our tour guide explained, are those rocks that you wished you had ducked under after you hit your head.

Stalactites and Stalagmites

The tour winds through some pretty tights spaces, over seemingly bottomless pits and occasionally through wide open passageways. We stopped twice in rooms with enough seating to handle our group of about 120 where the ranger explained the history of the cave and the various formations that we would be seeing. In addition to stalactites and stalagmites, there was drapery, columns (connected stalagmites and stalactites), bacon and popcorn and we did see most of them in the Frozen Niagara section. In the second room, the ranger turned off all the lights and there is no place darker or more quiet on earth.

Drapery

The final part of the tour is about a 100 step drop to the bottom of Frozen Niagara where you can really see the wonders of the cave that were developed over thousands of years. Simply amazing. And the best part of the tour was that we didn’t have to climb back up the 250 stair steps to get out. There was an exit conveniently located nearby and we were out of the cave.

There were no bats on the tour, at least none that we saw. The bat population was recently hit by something called the “White Nose” syndrome which had killed between 80 and 90% of their bats.

Day 2 - Kentucky and Lincoln

Ohio River with three states in view

Today we drove from Charleston, WV, due west across Kentucky to Horse Cave, KY, stopping at a couple of Abraham Lincoln historic sites along the way.

Our first stop was in Huntington, WV, to take a look at the Ohio River where three states meet. In fact, we kind of stumbled onto the exact spot where you can see three states in the photo. The foreground is West Virginia, on the other side of the river to the right is Ohio, and on the left, just beyond the tree and barely in view, is where the Big Sandy River feeds into the Ohio. The land on the left side of the river in the distance is Kentucky. The word Ohio means “Beautiful River” but it is any thing but as you can tell from the picture. At this point, it is pretty much a super highway of non-stop, ugly barges.

Lincoln White House China (first term)

We next stopped in Lexington to tour the Mary Todd Lincoln house, where she grew up before moving to Illinois to live with her sister. The house is extremely well furnished with historical pieces and well worth a stop if you get to Lexington. You can see her personal place settings, including a piece of her White House china, one of her mourning suits, and the playbill from Ford’s Theater the night of the assassination. The Lincolns stayed there during a 3-week visit after they were married so one of the cool things you can do is go up a set of stairs, using the same handrail that Lincoln himself used.

While in Lexington, we drove through the University of Kentucky campus as that is one of the things that we like to do. It is a very pretty campus, very well kept and with a lot of open space.

Lincoln's Log Cabin Birthplace (or is it?)

Our final stop of the day was at the Lincoln Birthplace National Historic site where we watched a film on Lincoln’s life in Kentucky, which was actually a very short period of time. He only lived in Kentucky until age 7, when his family moved to Indiana and finally on to Illinois. On the site, there is a well preserved cabin which was thought for many years to be the actual cabin where Lincoln was born. Carbon dating in 2005, however proved that the log cabin was only from about 1840 and Lincoln was born in 1809, so it isn’t actually the real one after all. Sometimes science is just a hindrance to the enjoyment of life.

From there we drove to Horse Cave, which is close to the entrance to Mammoth Cave National Park.

Day 1 - Home to Charleston, WV

This blog will cover our 16-day trip from our home in the Philadelphia area to the delta region of Mississippi to visit the Hot Tamale Festival in Greenville, MS. Along the way we plan to stop at Mammoth Cave National Park, visit some Abraham Lincoln sites, and also tour northern Mississippi a little.

WVU Coliseum

Day 1 was mostly driving. About 8 hours in fact. We got to see some really beautiful scenery in the panhandle region of Maryland along I-68 from Hagerstown, MD and on the way to Morgantown, WV. Although this is early October, the trees were changing in the mountains and gave a colorful backdrop to the valleys along the way. West Virginia, on the other hand, wasn’t quite as scenic as it was a constant array of mountains, with very few flat spots.

Napier, WV

We stopped briefly in Morgantown to drive around the University of West Virginia campus. That campus really isn’t very pretty and it is a lot of up and down walking, so it must be difficult getting to and from classes. We saw the football stadium and stopped to look into the basketball arena on Jerry West Way. One thing that I especially liked was parking in Coach Huggins personal reserved parking spot. Never did like that guy.

From Morgantown we drove to Charleston where we spent the night. We did make one quick stop in Napier, WV, (population 10, counting dogs and chickens) for a photo op in our namesake town. The GPS did try to play games with us here and try to send us off on a dirt road, but when we got to where we had to ford a two foot deep stream, we turned around and took a more main road and let the GPS catch up with us.

West Virginia State Capitol Building

Charleston, on the other hand, is a cute town situated on the Kanawha River.  The state capitol overlooks the river with University of Charleston on the other side. One of the best locations for a capitol building that we have seen, and we have seen a lot. One interesting thing about the capitol grounds is that they have two very different statues. One is General Stonewall Jackson (local boy) and the other is of Abraham Lincoln, who was president when the state was created.