Road Trip: Day Three -- Tupelo to Jackson

I woke up on Sunday in Tupelo, Mississippi, the birthplace of one Mr. Elvis Aaron Presley. I frittered away a fair amount of time on the Elvis Presley driving tour, which mostly consisted of looking at the outside of a bunch of buildings -- like Elvis's elementary school, his high school, the public library (?), and the Tupelo Hardware Store where his mom bought him his first guitar. There's also the Elvis Presley birthplace and museum, where for $4 you can see the two-room house where Elvis grew up. Small! Luckily, I got in and out before the people from the giant tour bus.

I drove over to Oxford, home of the University of Mississippi. The campus is really beautiful -- it's almost enough to make you forget the ugly history and the fact that they call themselves the Rebels. But not quite. Oxford is a really charming college town, with a lot of nice old houses, including Rowan Oak, William Faulkner's house. Unfortunately, all of the cool-looking restaurants on Courthouse Square were closed on Sunday night, so I drove out to Taylor Grocery, a little catfish restaurant about 10 miles out of town, for dinner.

Then I drove down to Jackson, home of a lot of unattractive sprawl.