☰Day Trips

Memphis sits at the meeting point of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas, making it a natural base for exploring the wider Mississippi Delta region. Oxford, Mississippi is two hours south — a handsome university town with a literary heritage (William Faulkner's home Rowan Oak is preserved there), good restaurants, and the Square, one of the most pleasant town centres in the South. Tupelo, also in Mississippi, is an hour and a half south and is Elvis Presley's birthplace; the small shotgun house where he was born is now a museum. Chattanooga, four hours east along I-24, has reinvented itself as one of the most livable small cities in the South, with the Tennessee Aquarium, a revitalized waterfront, and good hiking in the surrounding mountains. Little Rock, two hours west across the river in Arkansas, is worth a day for the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and the Arkansas River Trail.