(Photo) Elvis Tribute Artists.

Piece 1: Tupelo Elvis Festival. Each year in June, the city of Tupelo MS hosts a festival to celebrate the life and musical legacy of Elvis Presley.

The “King of Rock and Roll” was born in Tupelo in 1935, and his birth home (located in the eastern part of the city at 306 Elvis Presley Drive) is preserved as tourist attraction.

However, what really draws fans of the “Hillbilly Cat” to this small north Mississippi community is its annual Elvis Festival, a multi-day event featuring tribute artist competitions that culminate in a concert at the city’s 10,000-seat coliseum just east of downtown (now known as Cadence Bank Arena).

The concert featured some of the very best Elvis impersonators in the country (perhaps the World). They were masterfully “costumed and coiffed” and had perfected the vocal stylings and stage mannerisms of Elvis so well that, from a distance in the darkened arena, you could swear “the man” was there himself.

Some giddy concert goers on the floor level got souvenir scarves from a “Las Vegas-era” tribute artist strolling through the crowd near the end of the show.

The outer corridor of the venue was awash with tables full of Elvis knickknacks, bric-a-brac, t-shirts, and other souvenir items. We found a novelty car tag that said “Taking Care of Business” with the TCB lightning logo on it; looks good on the front of our little Nissan.

I’ll simply end by saying “thank ya…thank ya very much”.

CaramelCorn Shop in Tupelo

Piece 2: CaramelCorn Shop (Tupelo MS). As long as I can remember, I’ve had a taste for caramel corn.

I’m pretty sure my first experience with any semblance to the stuff was the molasses-flavored popcorn and peanut snack known as Cracker Jacks.

However, when I discovered a Karamelcorn Shoppe just inside the main entrance of an enclosed shopping mall, the smell of that freshly made caramel-coated popcorn was like a “siren song” to my tastebuds.

In its heyday, Karamelcorn had hundreds of stores around the country scooping its crunchy confection off visible cooling trays and into distinctive striped boxes for customers. Then, one day, the Karamelcorn stores were gone.

Sure, there is an abundance of packaged flavored popcorn (including caramel) available at any big box retailer, but it’s not the same.

To my great delight, I found the CaramelCorn (and Balloon) Shop in Tupelo, located near the center of town at 499 North Gloster Street.

This family-owned business was established in 1972 and continues to make its signature product in a copper kettle. The caramel coating they use has a unique flavor; kind of sweet and smoky. Really delicious!

So, if you like good caramel corn, be sure to add the CaramelCorn Shoppe to your schedule when in the Tupelo area.

Faulkner’s Rowan Oak in Oxford

Piece 3: Rowan Oak (916 Old Taylor Road in Oxford MS). A little less than an hour drive west of Tupelo along MS Highway 6 is Oxford; location of award-winning novelist William Faulkner’s longtime home known as Rowan Oak.

The house dates back to the 1840’s and was acquired by Faulkner in 1930, who named it Rowan Oak after the “rowan tree”, a Scottish shrub symbolizing security and peace, and the American live oak, for its image of strength and solitude.

The two level structure features communal/work space on the first floor and bedrooms on the second.

Two fun vestiges of Faulkner’s life on the first level are an outline of his Pulitzer Prize winning book, A Fable, written on the walls of the office/writing room and phone numbers scrawled on the walls of a telephone nook near the pantry.

NOW…READY TO START PLANNING YOUR NEXT ADVENTURE?

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