Dateline: North Little Rock, AR

Shiloh National Military Park

There are two things travelers to Memphis should do - listen to blues in a club on Beale Street, and pay homage to the King at Graceland. We, of course, did neither. Were I thirty years younger, I would've spent an evening soaking up the atmosphere in one of Beale Street's raucous establishments, but I'm now a middle-aged family man who prefers to return to his hotel after dinner to update his blog. As for Graceland, while I of course understand the importance of Elvis Presley in American popular culture, I'm just not enough of a fan to pay the whopping ticket price for a tour of the mansion. So instead of venturing into Memphis after checking out of our hotel in Jackson, we detoured south to visit the Shiloh National Military Park.

(It turns out there are Amish communities in southwestern Tennessee. On the way to Shiloh we saw signs along the road alerting drivers to the presence of horse-drawn carriages; soon after, we passed an Amish family in a buggy heading in the opposite direction.) 

You don't need to be a Civil War buff (and I'm not) to appreciate the significance of the Battle of Shiloh. Taking place over two days in the spring of 1862, it was the bloodiest battle of the conflict up to that point - more than 3500 soldiers were killed, while nearly 24,000 were wounded. After making initial gains, the attacking Confederates were turned back by the Army of Tennessee, led by a Union major general named Ulysses S. Grant. We began our visit at where else but the visitor center:

We then embarked on a driving tour of the battlefield. As with so many Civil War sites, it's hard to fathom the carnage that took place in such a bucolic setting of fields and forests:

The fighting took place among the largest Native American mound complex on the Tennessee River:

Two Federal gunboats positioned in the Tennessee River also took part in the fight, shelling the rebel troops:

 

From Shiloh, we resumed our inexorable journey west. Our GPS directed us into Mississippi (another state to add to the tally), and so proceeded along U.S. Route 72, paralleling the Tennessee state line, with my daughter behind the wheel. It was a monotonous stretch of highway, with very little in the way of interesting scenery to distract from the tedium. After spending the previous day carping about the unchanging forest backdrop along Interstate 40, Amber had developed a newfound appreciation for the beauty of Tennessee once we crossed back into the Volunteer State.

We stopped for lunch (while simultaneously seeking shelter from a spell of lightning and rain) in Collierville, a town of around 45,000 in the Memphis suburbs. It was while reading the Wikipedia entry on Collierville that we learned Parade magazine in 2014 had named the town square America's "Best Main Street", so of course we couldn't leave town without seeing it for ourselves. It was certainly pleasant, but not what I would rank as number one in the country. It didn't help that most of the stores were closed on a Sunday:

Leaving Collierville, we drove through Memphis before crossing the mighty Mississippi (the mightiness of which couldn't be seen from the freeway as we drove over the water) and entering Arkansas. We eventually called it a day as we reached North Little Rock, finishing things off with dinner at BJ's Restaurant & Brewhouse:

Tomorrow we continue our travels along I-40. Will Arkansas prove to be more interesting than Tennessee, or will it be just as tedious as Mississippi? Stay tuned...