ROADTRIP: Nashville to Laredo

It has been many years since my last real road trip. I got accustomed to them during university, driving back and forth from Ohio to San Francisco six times, picking a different route for each, and doing my best to stay off interstates when time (and money) would allow.

Once I graduated, I took the summer to take one last grand circular loop around the continent, through the northern midwest and mountain states, into Alberta and British Columbia, down the coast to San Francisco, into the deserts of Nevada and the southwest and back to Montréal before retreating home and eventually moving to New York.

After all of these amazing journeys through my country, I had seen 48 of the 50 states and had stacks of road atlases scrawled with red lines. Road trips were in my blood. Unfortunately the move to New York was preceded with the sale of my trusty Honda Accord, and this phase of my life ground to a halt. I have gone on many amazing trips since then to all parts of the globe, but mapping overland road trips to take could never be stopped, even when plans, time, or money would not allow a real one to happen. Over the years, more and more napkins and maps torn out of the back of flight magazines with my notes have been put into a file folder in my cabinet entitled simply "Travel ideas."

An opportunity to get back on the road, albeit small, has presented itself, in the form of an 11-day trip to four southern states:

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Starting after the wedding of a friend of Crystal in Music City, we will rent a car and drive to Memphis, with a small diversion for soul food and the first dozen or two miles of the Natchez Trace Parkway. Once in Memphis, we'll check out the Mississippi River, the famous Peabody Hotel and its ducks, and then visit Elvis at Graceland.

South of Memphis, we will spend a couple days on Highway 61 in Mississippi, which parallels the river and is more frequently called "The Blues Highway" for all the history it has with the music so famous in the area. At its southern reaches, we'll pass through Baton Rouge on our way to a couple nights in New Orleans, then off to drive through bayou country and the Creole Nature Trail, the most southern road in the state.

Eventually we will emerge in Texas and drive through the flat farmlands towards Austin, hanging out in the state's capitol for a few nights before driving south for stops at the Alamo in San Antonio and our final destination, Laredo, which sits right on the Río Bravo and the Mexican border. Before catching our flight home from here, we can take a short daytrip or two across the border for some good food and the satisfaction of an international vacation.

There are so many trips like this through my country that are possible, in and around locations I have been before, but going deeper and learning a place for the second time. Despite short times in Memphis or New Orleans, for example, I really do not have lasting memories of these places.

Hopefully that will change by Labor Day.