Highlights

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Itinerary

Day 1 – Tunica, MS – Gateway to the Blues Museum – Evening at Casino

Today, you arrive in Tunica, MS where you visit the Gateway to the Blues Museum. Music lovers will delight in this must-see attraction, while learning remarkable story of how The Blues was born and the role Tunica and the Delta played in building the genre’s legacy.  Experience interactive exhibits, artwork and more – including a recording studio where you’ll learn the basics of blues music with a chance to record your very own blues song.

Then check into your Casino Hotel for the night.  Enjoy free time this evening for gaming or entertainment. (B,D)

Day 2 – Clarksdale, MS – Delta Blues Museum- Ground Zero Lunch –  Dockery Farms – GRAMMY Museum –BB King – Greenwood, MS – Alluvian Hotel – Dinner at Hotel

The morning is spent in Clarksdale, MS, located at the intersection of Highways 61 and 49 (“the crossroads.”) Clarksdale and the surrounding Delta region are known as “the land where the blues began.” Here you visit the Delta Blues Museum, an internationally acclaimed museum that showcases the history and significance of the Blues in this region. The museum features a wax figure of Blues great, Muddy Waters and the famous Muddywood Guitar. Many now-legendary musical artists, were born and raised in and around Clarksdale: Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Son House, Ike Turner, Jackie Brenston, Sam Cooke, Junior Parker and W. C. Handy. The likes of Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf and Charley Patton are also associated with the museum.

Then enjoy a Southern Barbecue lunch and live music at Ground Zero, a restaurant/juke joint that is co-owned by actor Morgan Freeman. Clarksdale, Mississippi has long been described as “Ground Zero” for blues aficionados from around the globe. It all started here. That’s why Ground Zero Blues Club® was created — to celebrate the area’s rich blues heritage and to provide a forum in which it can continue.

Next, stop in Cleveland, MS at Dockery Farms one of the stops on the Mississippi Blues Trail. Dockery Farms was established in 1895 to produce cotton, America’s biggest export at the time. African Americans who worked at Dockery, including blues pioneer Charley Patton, created a culture that inspired the music we know as the blues. Their songs influenced the development of popular music all over the world.

Then visit the GRAMMY Museum Mississippi, an exciting and interactive celebration of the power of music occupying a vibrant space in Cleveland, Mississippi. Cutting edge exhibits, interactive experiences and films provide a one-of-a-kind visitor experience — engaging, educational, celebratory and inspirational.  Do you know which state has more Grammy Nominees & Winners than any other? Well that is Mississippi.  This interactive museum has tons of stuff to listen to, touch and see.  You can actually write and record their own blues songs in songwriting pods.  Have lunch on your own near the museum.

Visit the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center in Indianola, MS. Your tour begins in the theater and leads you on a journey through the Mississippi Delta and into the life of B.B. King. The Center features the very latest in high-definition projection and audio technology.  You are immersed in the sights and sounds of the Delta, and then introduced to the remarkable legacy of a man known as the King of the Blues.

End the day in Greenwood, MS.  In the Mississippi Delta, the land that birthed The Blues you’ll hear the haunting strains of America’s original, musical art form.

You spend two nights at the Alluvian Hotel.  It’s name has its roots deep within the region. The Mississippi Delta is considered an alluvial plain, a level land created by extensive amounts of mineral-rich soil deposited for centuries by the great Mississippi River – and as lore would have it, Tennessee Williams to the people living on this land as Alluvians.

Dinner is tonight at the hotel. (D)

Day 3 – Museum of the Mississippi Delta – Lunch at Fan & Johnny’s – Mississippi Blues Trail & Money Road – Viking Cooking School

This morning, visit the Museum of the Mississippi Delta.  Founded in the 1970s as Cottonlandia, this outstanding regional museum will take you time traveling through centuries of Delta history and culture. From prehistoric fossils, Indian artifacts and Civil War history, to the rescued remnants of Chief Greenwood Leflore’s lost mansion, the Museum of the Mississippi Delta offers an eclectic and fascinating overview of this most unusual corner of America. A short drive west of the museum will lead you to Fort Pemberton, site of one of the Civil War’s more eccentric skirmishes. The fabled steamship Star of the West, the first vessel to draw fire from Fort Sumter in 1861, lies buried in the mud of the Tallahatchie River just north of the fort.

Lunch is included today at Fan & Johnny’s restaurant, created by James Beard Award-nominated chef, Taylor Bowen Ricketts. Enjoy an incredible lunch restaurant that has world class food featuring a smorgasbord of local ingredients.

The afternoon features guided touring the Mississippi Blues Trail with stops at Blues Trail Markers. Besides the Robert Johnson marker, Leflore County claims seven other Mississippi Blues Trail markers, each commemorating a significant site in the development of this quintessentially American music.

Money Road beings at the north end of Grand Boulevard at the Tallahatchie Bridge, made famous when Greenwood’s own Bobbie Gentry captured the mystery in her 1967 song, “Ode to Billy Joe.” Across the bridge is County Road 518, a road seared into the nation’s consciousness as Money Road. This two-lane stretch of asphalt carries you to Little Zion Baptist Church, the gravesite of bluesman Robert Johnson, a cryptic character infused with talent so deep that many credited it to a deal with Satan himself. Five miles or so further up Money Road, the crumbling walls of Bryant’s Grocery are all that remain to mark one of the darkest chapters in American history. When Emmett Till stepped across the threshold of that store on an August afternoon, he set in motion an explosion of terror and retribution that would rock the nation. The Civil Rights movement, a landmark 20th-century social upheaval, traces its birth to that sagging store.

End the day at the Viking Cooking School.  Tonight is a classroom, with an absolutely delicious course of study. Your dinner is at the Viking Cooking School, you will enjoy demonstrations from expert instructors and notable chefs in a complete Viking kitchen, as your dinner is prepared.  Learn the latest in culinary techniques, taught by Viking’s personal chefs in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere. (At the Viking Cooking school the Hands-On classes are usually limited to 12 to 16 students, but the demonstration classes can host more people in that class). (B,L,D)

Day 4 – Depart for Home

After breakfast, depart for home. (B)

Tour Map