GoogleMaps, "Avoid highways"

A setting when creating a driving route in GoogleMaps allows you to "Avoid highways". The suggested route will then keep you off interstate highways and re-direct you mostly on to smaller, less trafficked roads. Some of which are very small indeed. The routes are longer both in time and distance usually, but always more interesting and mostly more scenic.

I used this setting often on the road trip I took this March. Having received my first COVID vaccination and suffering from cabin fever, I threw some clothes, my old just-in-case sleeping bag, and  hiking boots in the car and headed south. My goal was to visit my son and daughter-in-law in Atlanta and my daughter and her family in Kansas City, but it was also to feed my hunger for  back road travel. (See Traveling the Blue HIghways.) 

I took some precautions for traveling during this never-ending pandemic, including staying in motels with outdoor room entrances, eating take-out, and wearing a mask, even when I was the only one doing so. Thankfully, I rather like convenience store sandwiches.

A large part of my drive was spent on the Grear River Roads and National Scenic Byway Route. I caught the route in Preston WI and followed it to Memphis TN where I veered inland to Atlanta, drove to Baton Rouge after briefly visiting Florida's Gulf Coast (mistake). From Baton Rough I again followed the scenic path north, nearly back to Memphis, where I headed west toward Kansas City via the Missouri Ozarks.

Some of these roads were familiar. My then 11-year-old daughter and I drove to Orlando on an extended road trip in June of 1984 - a last hurrah before I left to teach in Saudi Arabia, leaving her back in the states. After DisneyWorld we checked out the World's Fair in New Orleans and started the drive north to home - following the Mississippi back to St. Louis.

The charm of the old towns along Old Man RIver seems to have grown. I felt a newly appreciated darkness to their history. - plantation houses built on slavery and Natchez's recognition of its role in the sale of enslaved persons - which I hope are also felt by most tourists today. Cairo IL, Tom and Huck's destination, remains a ghost town after race riots of the 60s. Downtown Dubuque IA is still in a sad state of abandoned storefronts.

Yet the charm of the old towns along Old Man River seems to have grown. Small towns like Trempalau WI, McGregor IA, Keokuk IA, St. Genevieve MO, and Natchez, MS still delight me. Clever town planners have encouraged the development of small coffee shops and B&Bs, antique stores, and other touristy type draws. Natchez has great walking paths and several old plantation homes can be visited north of Baton Rouge. The battlefields near Vicksburg are worth a drive-through.

View of Natchez Under the Hill and bridge across the Mississippi to Vidalia.

My goal was to visit my kids, and happily that worked out great. But along the way, I also accomplished something - a renewal of my love of small river towns and the remnants of history they contain. Plenty has been written about the impact of rivers on the human psyche and I have nothing to add excpet that the impact affects me as well. While I am not yet ready to hop on a raft for a months long float, I am keeping my eye out for a cabin next to a river.