R and J in the USA

Mississippi spans from the rich and fertile soils of the Mississippi Delta down to the beautiful white sandy beaches of the Gulf Coast. In between, there are flat lands and rolling landscapes filled with rivers, bays, lakes, creeks, swamps, marshes, islands and more. It’s a state with a complex and rich cultural heritage. It bursts with state pride and, as far as we can tell, some conflict about the degree to which their history allows them the freedom to show that state pride with the world beyond its borders – at least that is the impression we got from some of the folks we spoke with. We got the sense that for those that call Mississippi home, that means an awful lot. There is a connection and love of place that transcends conflict, history, and what anyone else might think or feel or say about any of it. Those feelings towards Mississippi are as old as the state itself.

There is a spirit we found here, a spirit that transcends heartache and overcomes obstacles. It’s a spirit that values family and hospitality and the beauty of simply enjoying good times with loved ones. It’s a spirit filled with a passion for home. That spirit pulsates through the rhythms and beats of the blues that were born here. It sings from inside the written words that made their way into the world’s treasure trove of literature. It’s a spirit that, when distorted through a lens of hatred, seemed to even be there inside some of the most horrific parts of the Mississippi past. And it is also the spirit that allowed folks to endure such horrors with courage and grace. It is a spirit that seems to have driven all in the state to overcome the obstacles of hurt and hate that had previously been so deeply entrenched, to strive to become something beautiful and new. It is a spirit that will continue to endure whatever needs to be endured and always seeks its way towards something with hope in it, something with beauty in it, no matter what hardships might need to be faced along the way. And, most of all, it is a spirit that loves Mississippi and has tremendous pride in the richness that is alive throughout it. It’s hard to put into words, but it was palpable and observable. The impression we got is that calling Mississippi home means way more than geography and runs deep into the heart. 

These, of course, are simply our impressions as visitors grateful for the chance to travel through the state over the course of eight days.

We came into Mississippi knowing how to spell it, thanks to an elementary school education that drilled it into us so much it became a core memory. Of course, we both knew that the amount of Mississippis that can fit between a flash of lightning and its thunderous clap tells us how likely we are to get hit by that lightning. From there is where our degree of knowledge diverged. Ryan’s took the path of somewhat knowledgeable, while Julie quickly realized how deeply down the path of good old ignorance she had been when it came to Mississippi. Ryan being significantly more informed about geography and regional history than Julie is not a unique phenomenon on our trip. We’ve found it is also not unique for people in general to have little knowledge of states that are far afield from their own. 50 States is a lot of states and life is busy. It is difficult to be informed, or, sometimes, to find a reasons to put in the effort, when it comes to places that are simply not directly a part of your everyday life. We have encountered many people for whom knowledge of our home state of New York is limited exclusively to the existence of our most famous city. New York City, which makes up 302 square miles of the 54,566 square miles of New York state’s area, is not only a small part of the state, but is also absolutely different than life anywhere else in the state. So it was for Julie entering into Mississippi. She knew that the number of Mississippis she could count between a bolt of lightning and its thunderclap could tell her how close she was to getting struck, but that is equivalent to having no useful knowledge of the state itself. 

Julie had heard of the Delta Blues, but only Ryan knew, in advance of our travels, that those Delta Blues referred to the Delta of the Mississippi River in the northwest corner of the state.

We both knew of the iconic B.B. King and we both knew about how he brought the blues to the world and made a mark on Beale Street up in Memphis. Neither of us knew that it all started in Indianola, Mississippi.

Ryan knew about Robert Johnson and the legend that he sold his soul to the devil at the legendary crossroads at midnight. Julie knew nothing of it until our time here in Mississippi.

Ryan knew of the tremendous civil rights history and the troubled history of Mississippi in the struggle towards civil rights. Once Julie learned about Medgar and Myrlie Evers, she found her own ignorance embarrassing, at best.

Ryan knew about the horrific tragedy of what happened to Emmett Till. Julie only knew about it because of the recent movie that was made about the tragedy.

When one stays in their own bubble, it’s easy to remain uninformed and never know it or feel inhibited by it. Julie knew, coming into this trip, she was not as aware of geography and domestic history as Ryan was, but it is still humbling and eye opening once one is faced with their own ignorance. We are all a work in progress and there is an infinite amount to learn.  

One of the best ways to learn geography is to travel. After spending two days in a hotel while we waited out the severe storm and tornado warnings that swept through the Mississippi Valley (and 29 other states), we now know that an equally good way to learn is to watch hours of a weather report tracking the path of severe storms and developing tornados to find out if they are headed towards you or not. As a result, we know more small-town names in Mississippi than perhaps any other state in our union. From Magnolia, to Tylerville, to Carson, to Mount Olive. And, of course, the town name that most caught our attention, Hot Coffee.  These are all towns whose names we probably never would have known. Our hearts go out to those whose names we only know because that is where the most dangerous tornadoes were headed and moving through. We know there are communities that got hit hard by the storm that, tragically, claimed 42 lives over the course of its path. We were fortunate to have the chance to wait out the storm safely in Jackson, which ended up being almost completely untouched by the severe weather outside of a few dark clouds and some light rain.

We entered Mississippi from the west on Interstate 20 and started our journey in Vicksburg. We headed right for Vicksburg National Battlefield and drove the touring road, taking in the sights and the history along the way of this significant battlefield Civil War battlefield. We wished we had time to wander and explore the historic town, but had to satisfy ourselves with a drive up and down its streets. 

From Vicksburg, we headed north into the Mississippi Delta. We set our sights on a few significant points on the Mississippi Blues Trail, including the B.B. King Museum, Robert Johnson’s grave and crossroads, the Delta Blues Museum, and the Highway 61 Museum. We managed to see all but the latter.

Arriving in Indianola, site of the B.B. King Museum, we noticed signs of economic hardship, even more so than we’d seen in other places. Even the Walmart there was a bit run down. Walmart is not a company that is hurting for money, so we wondered why they would not keep this store up to its usual standard. This was just one example of what seemed, at least on the surface, to be displaying a kind of economic difficulty that we didn’t often see in quite that way. But, one of the many things we have learned on this trip, is that you can’t judge a thing about what life in a town is really like just by how it looks while driving through. Eldon, Iowa, is our benchmark for this. If we had driven through it on any day other than the one we did, we would have thought there wasn’t much life in Eldon at all. But, thank goodness, we arrived on the day of the 0.5K Fun Run and had that superficial perception blown right out of the water. So it was with Indianola. We didn’t get a whole lot of experience of the town, but the B.B. King Museum was so fantastic, so well done, and so vibrant. Learning about B.B. King gave us a chance to learn a little bit about a town that is most definitely filled with life. Such is this trip. It is an impossible task to really know a place as a passerby. Heck – it’s tough to really know a place even when you live there, because one’s own life can become its own bubble of sorts. Still, we are doing our best to learn where we can.

We visited four sites memorializing the tragic case of Emmett Till in Mississippi – the site of the Bryant’s Grocery Store, where the tragedy of Emmett Till’s story took root; the Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center (ETHIC) in Glendora; the Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Sumner; and the Tallahatchie County Courthouse in Sumner, where the trial of Till’s murderers was held. These site visits were powerful, evocative and, unexpectedly, hopeful. We were particularly struck by an exhibit at the center in Glendora that was supportive of the many emotions that the exhibit can provoke and gave guidance and an inspiring and positive message about how to navigate them. 

We ended our travels through the Mississippi Delta at a campsite in John W. Kyle State Park with a beautiful view of a lake. 

Julie had started to feel the early signs of a head cold the day we crossed into the state. By this point on the trip, it felt mild. She was sure it would pass by without much ado. She was wrong. Much like the impending weather of which we were as of yet unaware, the storm and its conditions were only just beginning to brew.

The next day, we made our way to Oxford, Mississippi, where we visited Rowan Oak, the home of Nobel Prize winning author William Faulkner. We learned about Faulkner, and Julie found herself entranced by his eloquence featured in various exhibits in the house. We also had a lovely encounter with the young woman selling the tickets at the door. You can read about this encounter in our People Along the Way section. 

After Rowan Oak, we drove by Ole Miss and enjoyed an afternoon in the Oxford town square. Walking the square, Julie saw a pair of open-toed sandals she instantly knew were destined to be on her feet and promptly took off her Keen sandals, which in the process of falling apart around her feet. These new sandals were cute as heck, and Julie went in and handed over $40 without hesitation to bring them along for the rest of the ride. We had a nice chat with the store proprietor, who was happy as could be to hear about our trip and encouraged us to make our way back to Oxford someday.

We finished our walk around the square at Square Books. Julie was committed to load up on Mississippi authors of renown to further her Mississippi education. She left the store with books by William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and John Grisham. She plowed through the first third of Welty’s “The Optimist’s Daughter” while Ryan soaked up some good local bookstore wandering. We ended our Oxford visit with some Mississippi barbecue. 

We headed towards Tupelo to visit Elvis’s birthplace and to explore a town in the northeastern part of the state. We planned to finish the day by heading to the Tennessee Williams Welcome Center, then stay in that area overnight and hit Starkville on our way back south and west to Jackson. 

Those plans got changed when Julie checked our email and saw a note from the race organizer of our Saturday 5K in Jackson. She said they had decided to postpone the race until Sunday due to the impending weather. It was clear from her email that this was a hard decision, but that safety had been the top consideration.

This, as you can imagine, sparked our interest about this weather.

Then we checked the forecast for Saturday.

Severe thunderstorms and violent, long-tracked tornadoes.

Oh.

If you follow this blog, you probably received our real-time response to those warnings. If not, you can read our posts about it.

Knowing that in a camper van is a dangerous place to be during a tornado, and also knowing that we knew nothing about tornado weather, other than how scary and destructive it can be, we decided the best thing we could do was get as far out of the way of these storms as possible. We understood that might mean driving as far east as Florida. This would have a significant impact on our itinerary and would add a whole lotta driving. We didn’t know where we could go to make us and our van safe from the storm, so we figured, in an abundance of caution, to just get the heck out of there.

Call it luck. Call it coincidence. Call it divine intervention. Call it Vanna Knows Best. Call it whatever you want. Our van (which Julie calls Vanna White) knew exactly which letters to turn when it came to this particular wheel of fortune. For the first time on our 10-month trip across 40,000 miles, just as we rolled into Jackson Friday morning to visit the state capitol before making the long drive away from the storms, our check engine light came on.

We decided to heed that warning and have the engine checked. Fortunately, it was an easy fix and could be done quickly. Unfortunately, the dealer did not have the key parts in stock and couldn’t get them until the next day, the day the storms would be rolling in. 

We knew it wasn’t safe to drive without having the issue fixed. Had we tried to do so, our van may have broken down in the areas where the tornadoes ended up hitting and hitting hard. As fortune would have it, this issue arising gave us the opportunity to use our saved-up Marriott points to get two free nights at a Marriott in Jackson while our van had a safe, indoor home during the storm. While we couldn’t have known this beforehand, Jackson was almost completely untouched by the storms. In retrospect, we would have been absolutely fine changing nothing in our itinerary for on account of weather, as we had originally planned to be in Jackson during that time. Vanna forced us to stick to that, and it worked out well for us. The warnings were legitimate, though. Many towns in Mississippi were hit hard. While grateful for our safety, our thoughts were with those getting hit just 30-100 miles away.

While Ryan was getting the van checked, Julie was in the state capitol (still with the thought that we might need to hit the road in a few hours).

This is where the other storms are relevant, the metaphorical storms of Julie’s “mild head cold”. By this point, that mild head cold had brewed into a serious situation. Julie was beginning to feel pretty darn rotten. She tried to take in the Two Museums of Mississippi (making sure to keep distance from others of course, so as not to spread her germs – and 4 tests confirmed it was not COVID), but she could only muster 40 minutes or so before she just couldn’t move or read anymore. The cold was winning. She was bummed to leave the museums, as they were fantastic and she was learning a ton. But, with our new situation with the van, it looked like we’d be in Jackson for several more days – plenty of time to get back to the museums.

Well, that didn’t pan out either. 

We got to the hotel and it was fantastic. Not only did it have a wonderful (not-heated) pool that Julie would get her Mississippi swim in, but, well, it was a hotel room, so there was lots of space. Ryan was LOVING the chance to spread out beyond the confines of our cozy living space. It turned out to be a great place to be sick, too. Julie did not get to enjoy the expanses of the hotel, as she spent almost the whole time in bed, resting. This was all great until our last night there. We had started to work on our post-trip planning, since the end of the trip was closing in and we still had a ton of logistics to sort out before then. Maybe it was the excitement of planning. We still don’t know why it is that Julie went from a relaxed, resting, healing state, to some kind of hopped-up state that kept her up literally ALL NIGHT. That night, Julie slept a total of 29 minutes (according to her watch), and all of that lovely resting and healing just disappeared, in the most literal sense, overnight. Several days later, Julie is still pretty pummeled by that head cold. But that is not and has not dampened her enjoyment of the place or the pinch me moments of getting to experience a state that, only days before, she barely knew anything about at all.

On Monday, we enjoyed the morning at the hotel (Julie enjoyed it as much as she could in her sickly exhausted state), which included Julie taking a plunge into that cold, but refreshing, swimming pool. We then picked up the van and made our way south to our last few stops in Mississippi. We pointed the van toward Buccaneer State Park, 30 minutes west of Gulfport, and enjoyed a spot overlooking the waters of the Gulf. 

The next day we made our way into Gulfport. Julie, feeling somewhat better by morning, indulged in a massage (after checking that the massage therapist wouldn’t mind her in her condition). We finished off the evening with a movie at a theater (Black Bag – we both really liked it). 

We could have made our Sunday morning 5K in Jackson. When Sunday morning came around, though, Ryan was busy enjoying the freedom of a morning in the hotel, and he decided to let Julie sleep until she was done sleeping. So, we left Jackson without having run our 5K. We did this knowing there was a race in Gulfport on the 19th that we could catch on our way out of the state. Not only was there a race, but it was with a company that we had an open credit with from a change of plans we made in our Utah race months back. We emailed them and asked to use our deferral and got signed up for the Mainly Marathons Gulf Coast Series Mississippi race! You can read more about that in our 5K section. 

It was the perfect day for a race and a beautiful spot. After the race, while walking back to the van, we got to chatting with a fellow runner and found some more wild small world coincidences. You can read about our encounter with Gabriel in our People Along the Way section. 

After our morning 3.1 miles, we enjoyed a beautiful day looking out at the white sand beaches and waters of the Gulf. Julie finished her ode to Mississippi. We then drove to Biloxi, where we parked by the beach and worked on our Mississippi postcards and blog entries.  After a sunset and a quick stop at the post office we bid adieu to the Magnolia State and pointed the van toward Alabama.