Memphis Road Trip - Segment One (08/12/2005)
Driving Through Adamsville, TN

Welcome to another great web trip! During this Memphis Trip I will take you to see a bit of Adamsville, Tennessee (where I lived for a while when I was young), and many Memphis hot tourist spots including: Graceland, The Civil Rights Museum, Mud Island Park and Museum and of course the home of the blues: Beale Street. First I will explain the journey I took to get to Adamsville and then continue on to Memphis. The map on the left with the red arrow shows driving route I took out to Memphis. The red dot with the number 1 shows the location of Savannah and Adamsville, Tennessee. Just a Note: Adamsville is the home of Buford Pusser and Ray Blanton. Not much has changed since the early 1980’s when I lived there outside of a couple of new fast food restaurants for Savannah. But the community still gave a feeling of being cut off from the progressing world. I left Atlanta heading north on Interstate-75 till Cartersville where I caught US-411/GA 20 West to Rome. I then continued west on GA-9/AL-9 until I caught AL highway 35. AL-35 was a very scenic drive to the northwest and through the Little Canyon Natural Preserve and the rolling Appalachian foothills. I continued on Highway 35 through Fort Payne and until Scottsboro. I then followed US-72 west until I-565 which took me through Huntsville, scraping by the US Space and Rocket Center. I continued on Alt. US-72 (I made a mistake and ended up on the southern US-72 route) which took me through Decatur and Town Creek. At Muscle Shoals I headed North on US-43 until Florence Alabama (Home of WQLT 107.3 which I listened to almost exclusively in the 80’s). From Florence, I headed Northwest on AL-20/TN-69 to Savannah, Tennessee where we did a lot of fast food eating being the closest small city to Adamsville. In Savannah I traveled west on US-64 which runs continuous to all to way to Memphis, Tennessee. But while in Adamsville, I took many photos including two houses that we live in near Hickory Flat. After the 45 minute walk down memory lane I continued west towards Memphis.

NOTE: The green line marks the route I took home, which by far was a much quicker and more direct route. Mississippi and Alabama widened US Highway-78 and upgraded that highway to almost Interstate standards. It is classified and called Interstate-22 and runs about ¾ of the route between Memphis, TN and Birmingham, AL. This cut the travel time down about two hours, to just over five hours. Once in Birmingham I continued on Interstate 20 East to Atlanta.

Paul J. Lossner