# The Hill Country Ramble *Old 78 and MS 7 through Faulkner country* The Hill Country Ramble is a ~130-mile back-roads route from Memphis to Tupelo on MS 178, MS 7 and MS 6, driven in 1–2 days, that stays off I-22 through the Deep South. - **Drive:** Memphis → Tupelo - **Distance:** ~130 mi - **Days:** 1–2 - **Highways:** MS 178, MS 7, MS 6 - **Avoids:** I-22 - **Region:** Deep South - **Themes:** Literary South, Music & Juke Joints, Eats & Institutions, Small Towns North Mississippi's hills sound different from the Delta — a droning, hypnotic blues (R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, fife-and-drum picnics) that never needed Chicago. The same hills grew Faulkner, Ida B. Wells and one very famous Elvis. Memphis to Tupelo the old way: courthouse squares, catfish in a leaning store, and the best bookstore porch in the South. Markers: Blues Trail markers go hill-country here; Oxford layers on literary landmarks. ## The drive, segment by segment ### Kudzu & Juke Country *Memphis → Holly Springs · ~45 mi* Out of Memphis on the old Pigeon Roost Road into Holly Springs — antebellum square, hill-country blues HQ, and the ghost of the greatest Elvis shrine that ever was. Stops: - **Holly Springs Square** (Holly Springs) · Small Towns — Sixty-some antebellum buildings survived the war (Grant headquartered here); the square is the hill country's parlor. Kimbrough and Burnside made the county the loudest quiet place in blues. - **Ida B. Wells-Barnett Museum** (Holly Springs) · Civil Rights — Birthplace tribute to the journalist who documented lynching when doing so was a death sentence — a small museum with an enormous subject. - **Graceland Too (in memoriam)** (Holly Springs) · Cult Classics & Pop Lore — Paul MacLeod's 24-hour, all-Elvis shrine-house, open to anyone who knocked, any hour, for decades — until his death in 2014. Gone now, but road-trippers still drive by to pay respects to the patron saint of obsession. ### Faulkner's Postage Stamp *Holly Springs → Water Valley · ~50 mi* MS 7 to Oxford: Rowan Oak's cedars, Square Books, catfish at Taylor, then Water Valley's revived Main Street — Yoknapatawpha with espresso. Stops: - **Junior's Juke Joint Site** (Chulahoma) · Music & Juke Joints — Junior Kimbrough's legendary Sunday-night juke burned in 2000; the pilgrimage continues. For the living tradition, Foxfire Ranch in Waterford hosts hill-country blues on Sunday evenings. - **Gravel Springs Picnic (spur)** (Senatobia) · Music & Juke Joints — Othar Turner's fife-and-drum picnics — goat, cane fifes, drums older than the blues itself — continue under granddaughter Sharde Thomas each late August. The deepest root on the tree. - **Rowan Oak** (Oxford) · Literary South — Faulkner's cedar-alley home (1930–62), with the plot of A Fable penciled on the office walls. His grave across town accepts whiskey; pour, don't chug. - **Square Books & the Square** (Oxford) · Literary South — Three storefronts of one of America's great bookstores on one of its great squares; shrimp & grits upstairs at City Grocery. The Meredith statue at Ole Miss marks the 1962 riot the town has slowly learned to talk about. - **Taylor Grocery** (Taylor) · Eats & Institutions — 'Eat or We Both Starve' — catfish in a gloriously leaning 1889 storefront, brown-bag your own bottle, live pickers most nights. Worth planning a day around. - **Water Valley Main Street** (Water Valley) · Small Towns — A railroad town reborn without getting cute: the BTC Old-Fashioned Grocery, art spaces in feed stores, and a watermelon carnival since 1931. ### To the Birthplace *Water Valley → Tupelo · ~55 mi* East through Pontotoc ridge country to Tupelo, where the hardware store still sells the spot where a mother bought a $7.75 guitar. Stops: - **Tupelo Hardware Co.** (Tupelo) · Music & Juke Joints — X marks the floorboard where Gladys Presley redirected her son from a .22 to a guitar, January 1946. Staff will show you; buy a wrench out of gratitude. Dough burger at Johnnie's Drive-In after, in the Elvis booth. ## Tips and best time to go - Foxfire Ranch (Sundays) and Gravel Springs (late August) are the living hill-country sound — schedule around them. - Oxford's Double Decker festival (late April) and any SEC football Saturday transform the town entirely. - Taylor Grocery is BYOB in a dry-ish county tradition — brown bag it like everyone else. ## Worth a detour - **New Albany** — Faulkner's actual 1897 birthplace, with a fine little Union County museum — twenty minutes from Tupelo. - **Sardis Lake** — Levee sunsets and crappie shacks west of Oxford. ## Spurs & side-roads - Chulahoma juke country - Gravel Springs (fife & drum) ## Frequently asked questions ### How long is The Hill Country Ramble and how many days does it take? The Hill Country Ramble is about 130 miles and takes 1–2 days at a back-roads pace. ### Where does The Hill Country Ramble start and end? It runs from Memphis to Tupelo. ### Which highways does The Hill Country Ramble follow? It follows MS 178, MS 7 and MS 6. ### Which interstate does The Hill Country Ramble replace? It avoids I-22, using MS 178, MS 7 and MS 6 instead. ### How many stops are on The Hill Country Ramble, and what are the highlights? 10 stops are mapped, including Holly Springs Square, Ida B. Wells-Barnett Museum, Graceland Too (in memoriam), Junior's Juke Joint Site and Gravel Springs Picnic (spur). ### Which ready-made itineraries include The Hill Country Ramble? Delta 101 (3 days) and The Long Way to the Opry (21 days). ### When is the best time to drive The Hill Country Ramble? The atlas’s seasonal note for this route: “Foxfire Ranch (Sundays) and Gravel Springs (late August) are the living hill-country sound — schedule around them.” ## Ready-made itineraries using this route - [Delta 101](https://dixieroadtrip.com/trips/delta-101) — 3 days, ~420 mi - [The Long Way to the Opry](https://dixieroadtrip.com/trips/music-epic) — 21 days, ~3000 mi ## Connects with - [The Blues Highway](https://dixieroadtrip.com/routes/blues-61) — Memphis → Natchez - [Highway 64: Shiloh to Lookout Mountain](https://dixieroadtrip.com/routes/tn-64) — Memphis → Chattanooga - [The Bootheel: US 61 North](https://dixieroadtrip.com/routes/bootheel-61) — Memphis → Cape Girardeau --- Canonical URL: https://dixieroadtrip.com/routes/hill-country Publisher: Dixie Media (Dixie Road Trip, https://dixieroadtrip.com/) Last updated: 2026-10-05