Two Weeks
14 days · ~1700 miles · from Memphis
The whole lower South in one loop: Delta blues, Grant's campaign, River Road reckonings, Cajun Saturdays, the Gulf at porch speed, Hank's highway and the movement's capitals. Leave Memphis on a Friday and day 9 lands on Fred's Saturday all by itself. The trip of a lifetime, no interstate required.
This trip chains: The Blues Highway · Grant's Vicksburg Campaign · River Road & the Felicianas · Bayou Teche & the Cajun Prairie · US 90: The Creole Coast · Hank's Lost Highway · The Civil Rights Trail
Starting in Memphis, this 14-day itinerary connects The Blues Highway and Grant's Vicksburg Campaign and River Road & the Felicianas and Bayou Teche & the Cajun Prairie and US 90: The Creole Coast and Hank's Lost Highway and The Civil Rights Trail. It suits travellers interested in barbecue, boudin, oysters & tamales; blues, country, jukes & jamborees; battlefields, the movement & the past. The day-by-day bases let you split roughly 1700 miles into a sequence of visits rather than trying to cover every linked route end to end. Use the daily highlights to decide which places deserve your longest stops.
Budget an average of about 121 miles per day across the whole trip, or roughly 2.7–4.0 hours behind the wheel at an assumed 30–45 mph back-roads pace. This is a planning estimate, not a measured time for each leg: transfer days can be longer and rest days shorter. Add meal stops, tours, ferries, traffic and hikes separately; use each day's navigation link for current driving estimates.
Use these day-end areas to plan lodging; the map pins are orientation points, not hotel recommendations. The final day can be your departure day.
Choose your dates around the experiences below rather than assuming one season fits the entire trip. These notes come from the linked route guides; check current forecasts and official schedules.
Lorraine Motel, then 61 south. Juke night one.
A proper primer museum in an 1895 rail depot right on 61 — learn to hear what you're about to drive through.
Where 61 meets 49 — Robert Johnson's alleged bargain. Delta Blues Museum (with Muddy Waters's cabin), Ground Zero, Red's juke joint, the Riverside Hotel where Bessie Smith died (1937), beds at the Shack Up Inn, and Abe's Bar-B-Q since 1924.
Navigate day 1 in Google Maps ↗ · via Gateway to the Blues
Dockery, Indianola, Sumner & Money's history, Johnson's grave at dusk.
Three churchyards claim him; Little Zion's pecan-shaded plot north of town is the best-attested. Whiskey and guitar picks accumulate. The Help was filmed all over Greenwood; Tallahatchie Flats rents shotgun shacks on the river.
The collapsing store where a lie about 14-year-old Emmett Till began (1955). Markers here have been defaced and replaced for decades — the river-site sign is now bulletproof. Unbearable and necessary.
Navigate day 2 in Google Maps ↗
Tamales in Greenville, teddy bears at Onward, Margaret's Grocery, bluff sunset.
Rev. H.D. Dennis promised Margaret a castle and built one from cinderblock, paint and scripture — 'ALL IS WELCOME, JEWS AND GENTILES.' Viewable from the road while preservationists work.
A 16-mile avenue through 1,400 monuments to the 47-day siege that ended July 4, 1863 — a holiday Vicksburg kept at arm's length for generations. The USS Cairo, first ship ever sunk by an electrically detonated mine, was raised from the Yazoo a century later and sits under canopy with her boilers bare.
The 1858 courthouse where the Stars and Stripes went up on July 4th — now a gloriously eccentric museum of everything Warren County ever saved.
Navigate day 3 in Google Maps ↗
The full 1863 loop: NMP, Cairo, Raymond, Jackson's museums, Champion Hill.
May 16, 1863 — the decisive battle of the campaign, fought over a hill that changed hands three times. Almost unvisited: country roads, markers, wind in the cedars. Download the map first; there's no gate, no fee, no crowd.
Rev. H.D. Dennis promised Margaret a castle and built one from cinderblock, paint and scripture — 'ALL IS WELCOME, JEWS AND GENTILES.' Viewable from the road while preservationists work.
A 16-mile avenue through 1,400 monuments to the 47-day siege that ended July 4, 1863 — a holiday Vicksburg kept at arm's length for generations. The USS Cairo, first ship ever sunk by an electrically detonated mine, was raised from the Yazoo a century later and sits under canopy with her boilers bare.
The 1858 courthouse where the Stars and Stripes went up on July 4th — now a gloriously eccentric museum of everything Warren County ever saved.
Navigate day 4 in Google Maps ↗
Windsor Ruins, Port Gibson, Emerald Mound detour, Longwood and the Forks of the Road.
'Too beautiful to burn,' Grant supposedly said while marching through. The golden hand atop First Presbyterian has pointed heavenward since 1859.
Twenty-three Corinthian columns alone in the woods — all that's left of Mississippi's grandest mansion, which survived the war only to burn from a party guest's cigarette in 1890.
More antebellum mansions than anywhere (the millionaires sat out the war); Longwood's unfinished octagon — workers dropped tools in 1861 and never came back. Hold both: the Forks of the Road slave-market memorial, and a beer at Under-the-Hill where the river men drank.
A 1940 roadside restaurant built as a 28-foot hoop-skirted woman; you eat lunch inside the skirt. A complicated icon — repainted, reconsidered, still serving legendary banana caramel pie.
Navigate day 5 in Google Maps ↗ · via Port Gibson, Windsor Ruins
Rosemont, Woodville, the Myrtles' ghosts, Port Hudson's siege lines. Short miles, long porches.
More antebellum mansions than anywhere (the millionaires sat out the war); Longwood's unfinished octagon — workers dropped tools in 1861 and never came back. Hold both: the Forks of the Road slave-market memorial, and a beer at Under-the-Hill where the river men drank.
Jefferson Davis's boyhood home, kept small and plain — a footnote that explains a lot of what follows upriver.
Promoted as 'one of America's most haunted homes' — the Chloe legend, a mirror that allegedly holds spirits, and a B&B if you're brave. The town around it is the prettiest in Louisiana, ghosts or no.
English Louisiana: Grace Church's mossy churchyard, Rosedown's gardens, and Oakley House, where the young Audubon painted dozens of his birds as a live-in tutor.
The longest true siege in American history (48 days, 1863) — and among the first major assaults by Black regiments, the Louisiana Native Guards, whose valor here helped change the Union army.
Navigate day 6 in Google Maps ↗ · via Mammy's Cupboard, Rosemont, Angola Museum
Whitney (booked ahead), Oak Alley, Donaldsonville's museum — into the city by evening.
In 1868 Pierre Caliste Landry became mayor here — the first Black mayor of any American town. The River Road African American Museum carries the story forward.
The quarter-mile allée of 28 live oaks, planted a century before the 1839 house. The postcard of the Old South — read its slavery exhibit so you see the whole picture.
The longest true siege in American history (48 days, 1863) — and among the first major assaults by Black regiments, the Louisiana Native Guards, whose valor here helped change the Union army.
The crenellated Old Capitol — Mark Twain called it a 'little sham castle' and blamed Sir Walter Scott for the South's worst ideas — and Huey Long's 34-story tower, where the Kingfish was shot in 1935 and lies buried out front under his own statue. Free observation deck.
The 'Sugar Palace' and its gardens — Bette Davis filmed Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte here. Stay for dinner in the old kitchen if the budget allows.
Navigate day 7 in Google Maps ↗ · via Port Hudson, Louisiana's Two Capitols, Donaldsonville, Houmas House, Oak Alley, Evergreen Plantation, Whitney Plantation, Destrehan Plantation
No driving. The atlas grants clemency.
This day is a transfer or a local exploration day without nearby stops in the linked route catalogue. Follow the day plan above; do not add distant route highlights just to fill the schedule.
Navigate day 8 in Google Maps ↗
Timed for Saturday: Fred's Lounge at 9, Savoy jam at 10, Breaux Bridge zydeco brunch, Liberty Theater at 6. Overnight Lafayette.
Crawfish Capital of the World (legislature again, 1959). The Saturday zydeco breakfast tradition lives at Buck & Johnny's — dancing before 10 a.m. is not optional.
Open Saturday mornings only, since 1962: live Cajun French radio from a bar the size of a living room, dancers spinning by 9 a.m. Tante Sue's rules are posted; obey them.
'Rendez-vous des Cajuns' — the Cajun Grand Ole Opry — broadcasts live most Saturday nights from this 1924 movie palace. Two-stepping in the aisles encouraged.
'Catfish Capital of the Universe' by act of the Louisiana legislature. Spuddy's or a roadside shack — wild-caught, thin-fried.
Family outfits run flat-boats into the Terrebonne wetlands — gators, Spanish moss, and guides whose accents are the real attraction.
Navigate day 9 in Google Maps ↗ · via Des Allemands catfish, Swamp tour country, Morgan City, Franklin's Main Street, LeJeune's Bakery, Avery Island, Evangeline Oak, Breaux Bridge
Avery Island, LeJeune's hot bread, Franklin's oaks, Morgan City's rigs — back via the wetlands.
The first Tarzan film (1917) was shot in these swamps. Tour 'Mr. Charlie,' the first transportable offshore rig, then note the festival name: Shrimp & Petroleum, since 1936. Only here.
Tabasco has aged on this salt dome since 1868. Jungle Gardens shelters a snowy-egret city and a centuries-old Buddha in a glass pagoda — the McIlhennys were eccentric in the best way.
'Catfish Capital of the Universe' by act of the Louisiana legislature. Spuddy's or a roadside shack — wild-caught, thin-fried.
Family outfits run flat-boats into the Terrebonne wetlands — gators, Spanish moss, and guides whose accents are the real attraction.
Six blocks of oak canopy, iron lampposts and 400-odd historic buildings — the sugar boom frozen mid-stride.
Navigate day 10 in Google Maps ↗ · via Breaux Bridge, Evangeline Oak, Avery Island, LeJeune's Bakery, Franklin's Main Street, Morgan City, Swamp tour country, Des Allemands catfish
Bay St. Louis, the median lighthouse, Walter Anderson's secret room.
An 1820s brick fort guarding the back door to Lake Pontchartrain — the moody, marshy way out of New Orleans that I-10 drivers never see.
A 1922 chitlin'-circuit dance hall — Etta James, Big Joe Turner — still throwing shows in a town that calls itself 'a place apart.'
Cast iron, 1848, and standing in the median of US 90 — it rode out Camille and Katrina and became the coast's comeback symbol. Long tended by women keepers, a 19th-century rarity.
Frank Gehry pavilions under the oaks for George Ohr, the self-declared 'Mad Potter of Biloxi,' whose wild pots America only appreciated fifty years too late.
The hermit genius who rowed twelve miles to Horn Island to paint pelicans through hurricanes. His secret painted room, discovered after his death, is here intact.
Navigate day 11 in Google Maps ↗ · via Fort Pike & the Rigolets, 100 Men Hall, Biloxi Lighthouse, Ohr-O'Keefe Museum
Africatown morning (unhurried), Carnival Museum, Dew Drop dog, Eastern Shore sunset.
Founded by survivors of the Clotilda, the last known slave ship (1860, fifty years after the trade was banned). The wreck was finally found in 2019; the Heritage House museum tells the community's story.
Founded 1894 as a single-tax utopian colony — the experiment technically still runs. Bookshops, flowers on every corner, and the pier at sunset over Mobile Bay.
In 1973, two fishermen reported being floated aboard a craft by clawed beings — one of the most documented UFO cases ever. The city put up a historical marker in 2019. The river already had legends; it sings, after all.
Mobile's oldest restaurant (1924), home of the upside-down hot dog. Jimmy Buffett name-checked it; locals never needed the endorsement.
Mardi Gras started here in 1703 — fifteen years before New Orleans existed, as Mobilians will gladly remind you. Trains, crowns and Joe Cain's whole story.
Navigate day 12 in Google Maps ↗ · via Pascagoula Abduction Marker, The Dew Drop Inn, Mobile Carnival Museum, Africatown
US 31 north with Hank on: Georgiana's boyhood home, Priester's pecans, the death Cadillac, his grave at Oakwood.
Pecan log rolls and roadside candy since 1935 — the classic lower-Alabama pit stop, watching the candy kitchen work.
The unhurried barrier island at the bay's mouth: Fort Gaines' 1864 ramparts (it was between here and Fort Morgan that Farragut roared 'Damn the torpedoes — full speed ahead!'), the Audubon bird sanctuary where spring migrants make landfall, and the Estuarium's touch tanks.
Four miles of undeveloped dune and maritime forest between the condo walls — 'safe harbor' in French, and it is: nesting sea turtles, the Pine Beach trail, and the beach as it looked before 1950.
Alabama's sugar-sand main beach: the Hangout's family sprawl, Gulf State Park's pier and 28 miles of trails — and the hot-pink Pink Pony Pub (1956), the dive that every hurricane has spared.
The honky-tonk that straddles the state line — home of the Interstate Mullet Toss, where thousands hurl dead fish from Florida into Alabama each April. Songwriters' nights are shockingly good.
Navigate day 13 in Google Maps ↗ · via Dauphin Island & Fort Gaines, Bon Secour NWR, Gulf Shores, Flora-Bama Lounge, National Naval Aviation Museum, Brewton, Bigfoot Capital of Alabama, Priester's Pecans
Legacy Museum morning — it will reframe the whole loop — then Selma's bridge westbound, and the long two-lane home (or overnight Birmingham and add the 16th Street pilgrimage).
A converted gas station serving the chopped-pork sandwich (slaw on, hot sauce yes) by which all others are judged.
Where 61 meets 49 — Robert Johnson's alleged bargain. Delta Blues Museum (with Muddy Waters's cabin), Ground Zero, Red's juke joint, the Riverside Hotel where Bessie Smith died (1937), beds at the Shack Up Inn, and Abe's Bar-B-Q since 1924.
'You might say it all started right here' — B.B. King, about the plantation where Charley Patton taught a generation. The Grammy Museum Mississippi in Cleveland is the modern bookend.
Jim Henson grew up playing along Deer Creek, and Leland keeps a small, sincere museum to Kermit's swampy origins. The Highway 61 Blues Museum shares the block.
McKinley Morganfield was born here in 1913 (and raised up at Stovall, near Clarksdale). The square keeps his marker and a guitar-shaped gazebo; the town rebuilt it all after the 2023 tornado.
Navigate day 14 in Google Maps ↗ · via Priester's Pecans, Bigfoot Capital of Alabama, Old Capitol & Two Museums, Muddy Waters's Rolling Fork, Birthplace of the Frog, Dockery Farms, The Crossroads & Clarksdale, Payne's Bar-B-Q
The Deep South Grand Circle is a 14-day trip of about 1700 miles.
It starts in Memphis.
It chains The Blues Highway, Grant's Vicksburg Campaign, River Road & the Felicianas, Bayou Teche & the Cajun Prairie, US 90: The Creole Coast, Hank's Lost Highway and The Civil Rights Trail.
Day 1: near Clarksdale, MS; Day 2: near Greenwood, MS; Day 3: Greenwood → Vicksburg; Day 4: Grant's Campaign day; Day 5: Vicksburg → Natchez; Day 6: near St. Francisville, LA; Day 7: River Road → New Orleans; Day 8: New Orleans rest day; Day 9: Lafayette; Day 10: Teche country → New Orleans; Day 11: near Ocean Springs, MS; Day 12: near Fairhope, AL; Day 13: The Lost Highway → Montgomery; Day 14: Birmingham and add the 16th Street pilgrimage).