#us-80

Day 35 - July 27, 2017 - Selma, Alabama to Jackson, Mississippi

Day 36 - July 28, 2017 - Jackson, Mississippi to Rosedale, Mississippi

From Selma to Jackson, I mostly focused on getting to Mississippi. I stopped in Demopolis, Alabama to tour a plantation mansion that the book recommended. The tour was about as ahistorical as you would think. No pictures from that day. I stayed at LeFleur Bluffs State Park in Jackson, where I had to leave, go to Target, and come back to get a citronella candle because mosquitos were trying to devour me and fly into my van.

July 28, I went to the Mississippi Agricultural Museum before leaving Jackson; the highlight for me was the model railroad setups, which featured buttons you could press to activate various features in the scenes. Like cows mooing. From there, I headed to Vicksburg, where I visited the Coca-Cola museum and spent some time in the Highway 61 Coffeehouse. This marked the end of the Southern Pacific route (US-80) for me, though it goes on to San Diego.

Day 33 - July 25, 2017 - Tybee Island, Georgia to Macon, Georgia

Day 34 - July 26, 2017 - Macon, Georgia to Selma, Alabama

July 25 began the Southern Pacific drive, which is almost entirely on US-80, the old federal highway going from Savannah to San Diego. I only planned to go as far as Savannah to Vicksburg, Mississippi. In Savannah, I became the owner of a new iPhone and then went on my way.

Across Georgia and Alabama it was more pleasant driving among green rolling hills, but at least until Montgomery, there wasn’t much to see as far as I could tell. It also rained hard during the Savannah-to-Macon drive, to the extent that I thought about just stopping anywhere, because I was having trouble seeing anything. Perhaps unwisely, I pushed on until Macon, where the motels were very cheap, so I stayed in a locally owned one.

July 26, I got to Alabama, a state I’d never been to before, and there was plenty of history to be seen in Montgomery and Selma. The Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march followed Highway 80 between the two cities, so I was retracing that route, in reverse. A couple pictures from the civil rights monument in Montgomery, then a couple at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. I’d seen the movie “Selma” when it came out and it was quite a thing to see it in person.