The Great River Road and Clarksdale
March 18th – March 19th
To continue our American music pilgrimage (started in Cajun country), we headed north from Vicksburg towards Memphis with a small stop in Clarksdale, the birthplace of the Blues in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. We passed miles and miles of farmland without seeing a soul, just an occasional small community of mobile homes or grain silos. We camped for the night in the Great River Road Park, where the great river herself was about to spill over. Most of the campground was closed due to impending flooding (it didn’t really matter, there was only one other couple there) and from the looks of the bathrooms, it hadn’t seen many people in a long time.
We stopped off for a few hours in Clarksdale and found ourselves in the Greyhound Bus Station, now a retro-style tourist office in the making. We visited the Delta Blues Museum and learned about the beginnings of Muddy Waters, B.B. King and Ike Turner, as well as many other musicians whose names have slipped my mind. While waiting to cross the road, a man in a pick-up truck stopped just to ask us where we were from.
Mid-afternoon, we took the road once again for our next destination: Memphis, Tennessee.
Tags: BIG TRIP 2011, In English 2005-2006, Mississippi FR
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