Top of the Trace

Some years ago, one of the first travel pieces I wrote for Country Roads was about most of the Natchez Trace (read it here)—I had time to go on a portion of it, from Tupelo on down. My father’s sister had always wanted to go on the Natchez Trace, and over the past few months my father, my cousin, me, and my aunt—mayor of her town—went through the grinding comparison of calendars that would allow four adults to travel together. This March, we made it work and spent three days doing the whole thing: toe to tip, stem to stern, soup to nuts, except for a short section under repair. Here, therefore, is my make-good to Country Roads readers: the Top of the Trace.

My family flew into Nashville, and I drove up to collect them; we assembled at a hotel in Brentwood, a suburb home to many of Nashville’s glitzier musicians, so that we could be ready to roll first thing. Fortunately, the Natchez Trace’s first attraction is a breakfast restaurant. At Mile Zero—I guess Mile Negative One—sits The Loveless Cafe, a name which deserves a country song. (We couldn’t do better with rhymes than “went away” or “that day,” so the field is very much open if you have an idea.) I am the most decisive member of the family, so I ordered a slice of steeplechase pie—pecan pie fortified with chocolate chips and Jack Daniel’s—for us to pick at as we looked over the menu. Our second breakfast appetizer, a plate of hot biscuits paired with homemade strawberry and peach jams, arrived shortly thereafter, followed by country ham in red eye gravy, fried chicken, and the true fuel of a Southern road trip: grits. The line between “fueling up for the road” and “eating so much breakfast you get sleepy in the car” is thin, so we took the leftover biscuits with us in case we needed a wake-up snack.

As you’ll know if you’ve spent any time on it, the Natchez Trace draws much of its charm from its leisurely pace, and we spent the first day doing a lot of pulling over to read signs and look at plants. We were early enough to catch dogwoods and redwoods flourishing, with some sections of the Trace showing more lavender and white than green. The wisteria was out too, languid and fragrant, and I ultimately traced the other “good smell”  to the black locust tree, which doesn’t sound like it would smell particularly nice, but whose balls of dainty white blossoms perfumed much of the road.

As you’ll know if you’ve spent any time on it, the Natchez Trace draws much of its charm from its leisurely pace, and we spent the first day doing a lot of pulling over to read signs and look at plants.

We arrived in Florence, in the northwest corner of Alabama, having had only one argument about the map. (“I promise you, the dog cemetery is for tomorrow.”) My aunt, a champion small-talker, had gotten a recommendation from the lady at the hotel—which lady and which hotel are known only to her and to God—for dinner and live music at the FloBama, a restaurant and venue downtown. An appetizer sampler of onion petals, fried pickles, and potato skins allowed my cousin to discover the many virtues of Alabama white sauce, the better-than-it-looks all-purpose condiment popular in the northern and central parts of the Yellowhammer State. The server offered to ask about the recipe, then returned, sheepish, to inform us that she hadn’t realized it was a secret. We stayed for a set by a band called The Michaels, who brought the house down with a whistled rendition of “King of the Road.”

[Read about Chris Turner-Neal's excursion mining for diamonds in Arkansas here.]

A section of the Trace from about the Tennessee River to Tishomingo State Park in Mississippi was under repair, so we spent the morning on a Northwest Alabama detour. We toured Fame Studios, expensive but thrilling for the music buff—“and wherever you stand in this room, you can be confident that Duane Allman slept there.” Founder Rick Hall’s widow Linda still keeps the books and captivated a small group in the lobby with some family tales. She prefaced the story with the phrase, “now, I don’t want that guy who’s writing the book to include this, but…” so in good conscience I must draw a veil over it, but if you go to the studio and she seems chatty, chat back.

We proceeded to Ivy Green, birthplace and family home of Helen Keller. I had expected to have to Be a Good Sport, since on paper I wasn’t very interested, but a vibrant and expressive docent and the well-kept site surprised me. It’s worth the time to take the short tour, and head to the grounds to look at the odd collection of memorabilia Lions Clubs from around the world have sent to the site. (New Zealand’s offering, a large carved wooden gate in the Maori style with abalone inlay, is the one to beat.)

We picked up lunch at Superhero Chefs, which offers superhero-themed salads, sandwiches, and quesadillas in a cozy spot in downtown Tuscumbia—I can’t say I’ve ever given enormous thought to Wolverine’s diet (berries and small mammals?), but we thoroughly enjoyed our meal. We then hit the road for the Coon Dog Cemetery, a resting ground for coonhounds and only coonhounds that sits up a winding road in the Freedom Hills Wilderness. All of us dog lovers, we separated to wander around the stones, reading the names—Bean Blossom, Squeek, Tennessee Bawling Barney—varyingly joined by championship titles and words of friendship. My own best dog friend, no coonhound but an avid botherer of squirrels, had recently died, and it was good to remember Phoebe among these memorials to her rowdier cousins.

[Read about Chris Turner-Neal's hike into Mississippi's Grand Canyon here.]

We pointed ourselves back toward Tupelo only for me to force upon us all a stop at the Tammy Wynette Legacy Center in Tremont, Mississippi. The small museum (with a restaurant in the back) is choc-a-block with Wynettiana, including the front gate to her house, a seat from her private aircraft, and some combs and curlers from her beauty school days. The gift shop sells on-theme coffee, with D-I-V-O-R-C-E, Stand By Your Man, and Till I Can Make It On My Own blends. Back at the car, my aunt casually announced that she had never liked Tammy Wynette “or all that tears-in-my-beer music,” but that she’d gotten complimentary tickets for the Elvis birthplace in Tupelo—closing in fifty minutes and twenty-seven miles away. Reader, I hauled it, and we made it there in time to see the two-room house in which Elvis was born, as well as his childhood church and a reconstruction of his childhood outhouse. (Elvis slept, among other things, here.)

"Back at the car, my aunt casually announced that she had never liked Tammy Wynette “or all that tears-in-my-beer music,” but that she’d gotten complimentary tickets for the Elvis birthplace in Tupelo—closing in fifty minutes and twenty-seven miles away." 

Our goal for the night was Kosciusko, named for the globetrotting Polish soldier and patriot Tadeusz Kosciusko, and birthplace of Oprah Winfrey, whose easy-to-spell name may come to grace more monuments. We cozied up in the Hammond-Routt House, a gorgeous bed and breakfast a couple of blocks south of the town square, venturing out only for dinner at Jason’s Southern Table. The food was excellent—butter with blackberries whipped in!—and came in truly startling portions: we successfully picnicked on my aunt’s chicken strips for lunch the next day.

In the morning, we admired a nearby pocket park that had taken over the shell of a derelict building and with cheery paint and scrap-metal sculpture made it a little jewel. Then we were off—down the road on the last day of a successful family adventure.

To plan your own itinerary of the Natchez Trace, visit natcheztracetravel.com and scenictrace.com.