Minnesota Marine Art Museum
The Minnesota Marine Art Museum in Winona, Minnesota, (new state in the van!) features “great art inspired by water,” per their website. The museum was okay, but I’d argue not much of it was “great” …
Category: Books
Authors / Birds / Books / Civil Rights / Food / Sports / US Presidents
A Mad Dash Across Some Great Lake States
In early May, we needed to make an emergency trip from Kansas back east to New Jersey (1,100 miles in just over a day, woo-hoo!). After a few weeks on the East Coast, we reversed …
Buildings and Memorials Around St. Louis
If you ask me, the Saint Louis Abbey (pictured in the cover photo, with an interior snap above) looks like a big Bundt cake. It was built in 1962 and currently is home to a …
Johnny Cash Boyhood Home and the Dyess Community
Though neither of us is especially a Johnny Cash fan, we know a musical icon when we hear one. We crossed over the Mississippi River from Memphis, driving up just the Northeast corner of Arkansas …
The Graceland Experience
A visit to Elvis Presley’s Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee has been on both our radars for years, and it finally happened. Even after having had plenty of time to process it, I’m still not sure …
National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel
On top of the recent Civil Rights stops in Alabama and Mississippi, there was a little sense of dread about visiting another museum devoted to the dark side of America’s history so soon. However, the …
Scenes Around Mississippi
We detoured to Magnolia to visit the Lynyrd Skynyrd Memorial, which is near the site of the infamous plane crash. Doug deemed it a key moment in the history of rock-n-roll, and therefore worthy of …
William Faulkner’s Rowan Oak
I think if you look in the dictionary for “conflicted,” you will find an example of asking Doug if he wants to visit the historic home of an author, but it’s an author he doesn’t …
Sites in Jackson, Mississippi
Willie Morris (1934-1999) was a writer born in Jackson, Mississippi. Though he was just six months old when his family moved to Yazoo City, Mississippi, that’s still enough of a claim to have a library …
Eudora Welty House & Garden
Eudora Welty (1909-2001) is yet another author I’ve never heard of, yet found myself touring her house and gardens in Jackson, Mississippi. Welty won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973, so Doug had read The Optimist’s …