For 35 years, we've sent our trusted contributors all over the map below. Here are our favorite snippets from their travels. Makes you want to hop in the car, huh?
1. Liberty Theater, Eunice
“My head dizzy from the sheer power of the accordion and the warmth of the people of Eunice, I knew this was the perfect place to cap off a year spent exploring our part of the world.”—Alex Cook, December 2006 (Read the full article here.)
2. Creole Nature Trail, Lake Charles
“As I headed out of the wetlands on my second day, a large pink bird rose suddenly from the marsh grasses and soared overhead. It was a graceful and glorious roseate spoonbill, as pink as a sweetheart rose, as rosy as a drunkard’s nose!”—Kathleen Saccopoulos, September 2000 (Read the full article here.)
3. Little River Bluffs, Folsom
“Let there be no mistake. This is an experience for the lover of nature—a retreat from the sights, smells, and sounds of the manufactured environment that is such a central feature of everyday life for many of us.”—James Fox-Smith, High Spring 1996 (Read the full article here.)
4. Horn Island
“The beach is well over one hundred yards wide between the water and the dunes. You can see for miles in both directions, and it easily confirms that we have had at least half of this fifteen-mile long island to ourselves since we saw the last daytrippers yesterday afternoon.”—Dave Carner, September 2013 (Read the full article here.)
5. Natchez Trace
“I’ve seen Mississippi now. White gravy flows like water and the smiles are wider than anywhere else; I was called honey and sugar more times in three days than in the preceding thirty-one years. History crowds in on you; every town of any size we stopped in had been the site of a battle.”—Chris Turner-Neal, September 2016 (Read the full article here.)
6. Under-the-Hill Saloon, Natchez
“They asked if we knew the story behind the crumpled dollar bills stuck to the ceiling. Shaking our heads, we motioned to the bartender, who told us that, per tradition, people roll dollar bills around a quarter and stick a thumbtack through the top. Then they try to get it to stick to the ceiling. At the end of the year, the Saloon gathers the lot to host a community crawfish boil.”—Jordan LaHaye, May 2018 (Read the full article here.)
7. New Orleans Dive Bars
“Once you pass through the door that sits beneath the dilapidated Christmas wreath, you’ll enter a Schlitz-soaked world that seems to exist in a time and place entirely its own.”—Alex Kennon, February 2017 (Read the full article here.)
8. Wild Azalea Trail, Kistachie National Forest
“On the trail’s southern end, you ride the narrow trail with vegetation brushing your elbows when suddenly you emerge in a light-filled opening in the forest canopy, the tops of pine trees towering overhead. If you travel the trail’s length to Valentine Lake from Woodworth, the distance is about twenty-six miles; there are an additional five miles if you take the Kincaid loop on the northern end.”—Ed Cullen, April 2015 (Read the full article here.)
9. U.S. Highway 90 (Coast Road, from New Orleans to Mobile)
This is where the Gulf really opens to me in all its glory, though. I have to concentrate to keep my eyes on the road instead of on the silhouettes of shrimp boats and the horizon.”—Lili LeGardeur, September 2002 (Read the full article here.)
10 San Bernardo Scenic Byway (Hwy 46)
“If I learned anything on this trip, it is that a fried oyster poboy baking in the heat of a Volkswagen is a far better air freshener than any pine-scented tree that hangs from your rearview mirror.”—Keith Pandolfi, September 2002 (Read the full article here.)
11. Palmetto Island State Park
“‘People are really nice in the South,’ he said between sporkfuls of lukewarm sustenance. ‘It’s really weird to be somewhere so beautiful, and with so much history, surrounded by refineries.’ He was a graceful traveler and didn’t overstay his welcome; so after Dan’s departure, Josh was awake enough to paddle the ice chest across the moonlit lake to the parking lot. We forgot to throw our dirty dishes in with the load, however, so while Josh cruised across the lake, I found myself defending our campsite against a metropolitan population of adorable, meddling raccoons.”—Christie Matherne Hall, March 2014 (Read the full article online here.)
Dale Irvin
12. Hot Coffee, Mississippi
“'Huh?’ There I was driving down a back road, on one of those glorious days during my time as managing editor, when I’d been able to leave the office and set off to explore the eponymous destinations which this magazine celebrates.I’d just whizzed past a familiar road sign. But not one familiar from this place. Or this time. This was instead, a sign familiar from my boyhood growing up in Iowa, warning drivers to watch out for slow moving buggies: The primary transportation for the Amish community near my hometown. But I wasn’t in Iowa. I was in southern Mississippi. I did a u-turn. Yep, there it was. I could smell a story. I was headed out of charming Columbia, Mississippi, having just tucked away a tasty lunch from the Southern Fried Rabbit Restaurant in a converted Dairy Queen, bound for the delightfully named Mississippi town of Hot Coffee. Home, as I was to discover, to a tiny community of German Baptists, who like the Amish eschew motorized transportation, electricity, and other comforts of modern living. Their dress is also remarkably like the Amish. I found a shop offering beautiful hand-made baskets run by a member of the community and arranged to interview her. I started the interview by telling her about how I’d grown up in Iowa near an Amish community and shared my observation that her community seemed be very similar.'
Oh, we’re not similar at all,’ was her slightly horrified response. 'We’re Baptist. They’re not.' And yet another life lesson learned on the road: My view of life subject to constant reexamination.”—Dale Irvin, managing editor, 2005–2013. (Read more of Dale's Mississippi adventures here.)
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