Another Charleston home turned inn is the spectacular 1886 Wentworth Mansion, which boasts Tiffany stained glass, marble fireplaces, and 21 spacious rooms and suites. Dine at Circa 1886 in the handsome carriage house just behind the inn, where chef Marc Collins creates artful lowcountry meals. The urbane Planters Inn is a quiet 64-room oasis despite its location alongside the bustling City Market. Its Peninsula Grill is considered a culinary temple of New South cuisine.
The city’s role as cultural center of the pre–Civil War South continues today, with the Spoleto Festival U.S.A., a 17-day extravaganza featuring more than 120 performances from opera to dance. Started in 1977 as a sister event to the one in Spoleto, Italy (see p. 216), the festival ends with fireworks at the 18th-century Middleton Place plantation on the Ashley River. Dine early at its acclaimed restaurant, then stroll through America’s first landscaped gardens.
Antebellum homes line the Battery in Charleston.
VISITOR INFO: www.charlestoncvb.com. FORT SUMTER: Tel 843-883-3123; www.nps.gov/fosu. CHARLESTON MUSEUM: Tel 843-722-2996; www.charlestonmuseum.org. FESTIVAL OF HOUSES AND GARDENS: Historic Charleston Foundation. Tel 843-722-3405; www.historiccharleston.org. When: 4 weeks beginning mid-Mar. FALL TOURS: Preservation Society of Charleston. Tel 843-722-4630; www.preservationsociety.org. When: 5 consecutive long weekends beginning late Sep. TWO MEETING STREET INN: Tel 888-723-7322 or 843-723-7322; www.twomeetingstreet.com. Cost: from $230. WENTWORTH MANSION: Tel 888-466-1886 or 843-853-1886; www.wentworthmansion.com. Cost: from $330; dinner at Circa 1886 $60. PLANTERS INN: Tel 800-845-7082 or 843-722-2345; www.plantersinn.com. Cost: from $200; dinner at Peninsula Grill $55. SPOLETO FESTIVAL: Tel 843-579-3100; www.spoletousa.org. When: May–mid-Jun. BEST TIMES: Mar for blooms; Mar–May and Sep–Dec for pleasant weather.
A Marriage of the Old South and the New
LOWCOUNTRY CUISINE
Charleston, South Carolina, U.S.A.
The coastal areas of South Carolina and Georgia are the home of lowcountry cuisine, a harmonious blending of French, Spanish, African, and Caribbean influences, and Charleston is its culinary capital. Drawing upon traditional ingredients like shrimp, oysters, crab, rice, grits, okra, and fried greens, lowcountry food has enjoyed a creative spin in recent years.
At the city’s most hallowed culinary institutions, such as the Peninsula Grill and Circa 1886 (see previous page), and the slightly more casual but still highly refined Magnolias, you’ll find time-honored recipes alongside more innovative dishes. Similarly, at both Fig and Husk, the farm-to-table menus pay homage to the bounty of the lowcountry with an updated twist.
But to truly appreciate the high style of the new South, you’ve got to experience the homey excellence of the no-frills old South at Hominy Grill, a neighborhood restaurant whose devotees adore the breakfasts of buttermilk pancakes and biscuits with country ham and mushroom gravy. Lunch is great too.
Family-run Bowen’s Island Restaurant is another down-home favorite, located on the outskirts of town and serving some of the best roasted oysters and the freshest shrimp around. Regulars wept when the original shack burned down in 2006. Luckily, you can still eat shovelfuls of bivalves, straight from Bowen’s Island’s own beds, in the new main dining room.
MAGNOLIAS: Tel 843-577-7771; www.magnolias-blossom-cypress.com. Cost: dinner $45. FIG: Tel 843-805-5900; www.eatatfig.com. Cost: dinner $45. HUSK: Tel 843-577-2500; www.huskrestaurant.com. Cost: lunch $20. HOMINY GRILL: Tel 843-937-0930; www.hominygrill.com. Cost: dinner $30. BOWEN’S ISLAND: Tel 843-795-2757; www.bowensislandrestaurant.com. Cost: dinner $15. BEST TIMES: late Jan–early Feb for Lowcountry Oyster Festival; early Oct for Taste of Charleston festival.
Nature’s High Drama
BADLANDS NATIONAL PARK
South Dakota, U.S.A.
To the Lakota Sioux, they were the mako shika, the “bad lands.” The French-Canadian fur trappers saw them as “les mauvaises terres à traverser,” “bad lands to travel across.” But Frank Lloyd Wright described them as “an indescribable mysterious elsewhere . . . more spiritual than earth but created out of it.”
This area once rested under an inland sea and later was a lush forest, and rich fossilized remains from both eras now lie beneath the surface. Above ground it’s the “bones of the Badlands” that draw us. Sculpted by 75 million years of sedimentation and erosion and now preserved as a national park, the 244,000 acres are an eerily sparse yet spectacular landscape. Some rock formations rise more than 1,000 feet, while others wear bands of stratified mineral deposits—nature’s brushstrokes.
Explore the Badlands by foot using either a quarter-mile loop or the little-used 10-mile Castle Trail. Or travel by car on the Badlands Loop. Nature’s theatricality is most visible at dawn, dusk, and just after a rainfall, when the interplay of light and shadow is most poetic.
American Indians lived here for 11,000 years, but they were forced onto reservations when white homesteaders arrived in the late 19th century. In desperation, many became followers of the “Ghost Dance” religion. Fearing that the religious fervor could incite war, the Seventh Cavalry took a band of Sioux dancers into custody in December 1890. A scuffle at Wounded Knee Creek escalated into wholesale slaughter—nearly 300 Indians were killed. Today a simple memorial marks the site, approximately 45 miles south of the park.
WHERE: Northeast entrance is 88 miles southeast of Rapid City. Tel 605-433-5361; www.nps.gov/badl. BEST TIMES: Apr–Jun and Sep–Oct for nicest weather. Winter promises solitude.
Sacred Land of Heroes: Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse
THE BLACK HILLS
South Dakota, U.S.A.
Named for the inky shade of their ponderosa pines, the Black Hills of South Dakota have been considered sacred by the Lakota Sioux for millennia. Today, because of the passions of a few artists, the land itself has become hallowed in a different way.
Conceived in 1924 by Danish-American sculptor Gutzon Borglum, the monument at Mount Rushmore was to be a “Shrine of Democracy,” tracing the country’s history by way of its leaders, from its birth (Washington) through its early growth (Jefferson), preservation (Lincoln), and later development (Teddy Roosevelt). Seventeen years later Rushmore was transformed, with four enormous faces, six stories high, peering into the Black Hills.
The monument was an insult to native peoples. An 1868 treaty deeded the land to the Sioux “in perpetuity,” but 6 years later, gold was discovered and the U.S. government reclaimed it. In 1876, when all Lakota bands were ordered onto reservations, the great chiefs Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and Gall organized a resistance that destroyed the Seventh Cavalry at General George Custer’s Last Stand, at the Little Bighorn. But in less than two years Crazy Horse was dead, and the Sioux’s fate was sealed.
In 1939 the Sioux invited Boston-born sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski to carve the image of their own hero, Crazy Horse, into a Black Hills mountain 17 miles southwest of Rushmore. Unlike the monument at Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse would be sculpted in the round: the great chief, sitting astride a horse, his arm outstretched. The memorial would also dwarf Rushmore at 563 feet high and 641 feet long, making it the largest monument on earth. Since Ziolkowski’s death in 1982, his family has carried on with the work. A completion date is impossible to predict, but, as the project’s motto says, “Never forget your dreams.”
The monuments aren’t the only reason to visit this region. The 71,000 rolling acres of Custer State Park hold one of the largest publicly owned buffalo herds, some 1,500 strong—though only a glimmer of the 60 million buffalo that once roamed the American prairie. The annual Buffalo Roundup brings the West’s early days alive and includes a 3-day Buffalo Roundup Arts Festival and a popular chili cookoff. Drive the 18-mile Wildlife Loop Road, keeping an eye out for elk and eagles, or take in spectacular views on the scenic 14-mile Needles Highway.
Near the park’s eastern border is the stone-and-pine State Game Lodge. Built in 1920, it was Calvin Coolidge’s Summer White House in 1927. You can stay in his room, but less pric
ey options are also available.
The creation of the Crazy Horse Memorial is an ongoing project.
WHERE: Mt. Rushmore is 25 miles southwest of Rapid City; www.nps.gov/moru. CRAZY HORSE: Tel 605-673-4681; www.crazyhorsememorial.org. CUSTER STATE PARK: Tel 605-773-3391; www.custerstatepark.info. STATE GAME LODGE: Tel 888-875-0001 or 605-255-4772; www.custerresorts.com. Cost: from $140. BEST TIMES: summer evenings for illumination ceremony of Rushmore, fireworks, and the Crazy Horse “Legends in Light” laser light show; late Sep for Buffalo Roundup.
Party!
STURGIS MOTORCYCLE RALLY
Sturgis, South Dakota, U.S.A.
For folks who like choppers, hogs, and all forms of motorbikes, there’s no place like Sturgis, a small town (population 6,442) that annually hosts the biggest motorcycle rally in America. It was here, in 1936, that Clarence “Pappy” Hoel founded the Jackpine Gypsies Motorcycle Club, which held the first Black Hills Motor Classic, with nine participants, two years later. Today Sturgis attracts close to a half million people every August for a week of bike shows, concerts, races, demos, group rides, camaraderie, and plain old partying, with hundreds of vendors selling everything from food to tattoos. Attendees run the gamut from those who live by the Harley code to dentists and CEOs who don their leathers only on weekends. It’s like Mardi Gras with chrome, though things have quieted down since the days when it was not unusual to see naked riders cruising down Main Street.
Yes, there’s lots of booze (Jack Daniel’s is a major sponsor); yes, there’s a lot of rock ’n’ roll (recent concerts have included ZZ Top and Kid Rock); and campgrounds like the Buffalo Chip get pretty wild; but Sturgis isn’t all just one big party. Bike buffs can explore the Sturgis Motorcycle Museum and Hall of Fame or join posses of riders who hit the scenic byways of the Black Hills National Forest. Wall Drug Store, famous for its Great Depression marketing ploy of promising free water to customers, is nearby and sells everything from hand-tooled cowboy boots to horse liniment. Try a buffalo burger at the 520-seat restaurant and soak up the Western hospitality.
WHERE: 24 miles north of Rapid City. Tel 605-720-0800; www.sturgismotorcyclerally.com. When: early Aug. BUFFALO CHIP CAMPGROUND: Tel 605-347-9000; www.buffalochip.com. Cost: rally pass from $155, includes campsite, facilities use, and access to all concerts on the campground. STURGIS MOTORCYCLE MUSEUM: Tel 605-347-2001; www.sturgismuseum.com. WALL DRUG STORE: Tel 605-279-2175; www.walldrug.com. WHERE TO STAY: Holiday Inn Express is the newest and nicest of slim pickings. Tel 605-347-4140; www.hiexpress.com. Cost: from $155.
Cloaked in Blue Haze
THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS
Tennessee and North Carolina, U.S.A.
Rolling across 800 square miles of the southern Appalachians and straddling the Tennessee–North Carolina border, Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited national park in the country. Visitors come to gaze at the 16 peaks rising higher than 5,000 feet and the plethora of native plant, fish, and animal species, which has led to the park’s designation as an International Biosphere Reserve.
Among the world’s oldest mountain ranges, the Smokies were named for the bluish haze that often shrouds them, water vapor emitted by the dense forests that cover 95 percent of the park. The 150 hiking trails range from easy walks to a rugged 70-mile stretch of the Appalachian Trail (see p. 756). About 550 miles of the park’s approximately 800 miles of marked trails allow exploration on horseback, or you can enjoy it all by car on the Newfound Gap Road, whose 34 scenic miles link Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and Cherokee, North Carolina. The road’s views encompass 6,593-foot Mount LeConte and Clingmans Dome, the park’s highest peak at 6,643 feet.
Blackberry Farm is a kind of “Ritz-Carlton in the Woods,” known for unparalleled country sophistication and luxe accommodations. Its 4,200-acre spread is an extension of the park’s natural beauty; of the various activities on the menu, fly-fishing is king. Toast sundown with a shot of 20-year-old bourbon, then enjoy the southern-oriented “foothills cuisine” for which this upscale resort has won awards, served in its barnlike restaurants.
For a fraction of the cost, the contemporary, couples-only Butterfly Gap B&B offers five unique cottages on 900 acres that might lure you into thinking you have the Smokies to yourself. Those approaching from N.C. will be tempted to stop at the 250-acre hilltop retreat called The Swag. This charming 14-room inn, comprised of five historic buildings deftly outfitted in country-chic décor, has poetic views and a private hiking trail into the park.
Newfound Gap is the lowest mountain pass through the Great Smokies.
WHERE: Tennessee’s main park entrance is the Sugarlands Visitor Center, 2 miles south of Gatlinburg. Tel 865-436-1200; www.nps.gov/grsm. BLACKBERRY FARM: Tel 800-648-2348 or 865-380-2260; www.blackberryfarm.com. Cost: from $395. BUTTERFLY GAP: Tel 865-984-6021; www.butterflygap.com. Cost: from $195 (off-peak), from $215 (peak). THE SWAG: Tel 800-789-7672 or 828-926-0430; www.theswag.com. Cost: from $490, inclusive. When: late Apr–early Nov. BEST TIMES: May for spring flowers; Oct for foliage.
The King’s Castle on the Hill
GRACELAND
Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.A.
Elvis Presley’s Graceland Mansion, where he lived from 1957 till his death on August 16, 1977, at the age of 42, is something of a hoot, but it is also intriguing and at times surprisingly moving. Most people have heard about the crystal chandeliers and the legendary Jungle Room, with its waterfall wall, shag-carpeted ceiling, and fake-fur upholstery. But irreverence soon fades: Graceland goes beyond simple kitsch.
Much of this experience has to do with the fans who travel thousands of miles to see the King’s home and final resting place, in the Meditation Garden. It also has much to do with the greatness of Elvis himself, a poor boy from Mississippi who took the music of both the black and white South and ran them through a set of vocal cords that could get young girls, old women, and most likely God Himself all jittery. From the day the successful 22-year-old heartthrob moved in here with his mama and daddy in fulfillment of a boyhood promise to buy them the biggest house in town (it cost a whopping $102,500 at the time), Graceland was Elvis’s escape and refuge, its lavishness a public display of the private excess that would be his downfall. Graceland today ranks as one of the nation’s most visited homes, and its frozen-in-time living room, music room, dining room, kitchen, TV room, pool room, and Jungle Room are all open for visitors. Elsewhere within the 14-acre complex are a trophy hall lined with gold and platinum records, stage costumes, and mementos; Elvis’s collection of 33 vehicles, including his famous 1955 pink Cadillac Fleetwood; and his two private jets. About 100 miles southeast of Memphis, true pilgrims can also visit Elvis’s birthplace, a simple two-room home in Tupelo, Mississippi (see p. 818), where the King was born on January 8, 1935.
INFO: Tel 800-238-2000 or 901-332-3322; www.elvis.com. WHERE TO STAY: The kitsch-but-cool Heartbreak Hotel is across the street. Tel 877-777-0606 or 901-332-1000; www.elvis.com/epheartbreakhotel. Cost: from $140. BEST TIMES: Jan 8 for Elvis’s birthday celebration; around Aug 16 (the anniversary of Presley’s death) for Elvis Week.
It’s All About the Pork
MEMPHIS BARBECUE
Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.A.
Though the competition is fierce among the various barbecue capitals in America, Memphis stands above the crowd. Unlike Texas barbecue, which is all about beef, BBQ in Memphis means pork, and it comes in two versions: pulled pork shoulder (shredded by hand) and ribs served either “wet” (with sauce) or “dry” (with a rub of spices and herbs).
The best of the smoky bunch just might be found at the Rendezvous, located in a busy cellar near the grand Peabody Hotel, known for the trained ducks that waddle through its lobby twice daily to the music of John Philip Sousa. For the full Rendezvous experience, order the dry charcoal-broiled ribs with red beans and rice. The other big Memphis name for dry ribs is Corky’s Bar-B-Q, with a string of franchises across the country and a long list of well-loved dishes that keep the place packed.
The funkier, more down-home Payne’s, housed in an old gas station near Graceland (see previous page), serves one of the most legendary chopped pork sandwiches in town. At another great casual joint, the paper-plate-style Cozy Corner, the specialties are BBQ Cornish hens and surprisingly tasty BBQ baloney sandwiches. Central BBQ, a relative newcomer, has developed a following for meaty ribs (both dry and wet) and thick-cut homemade potato chips. At the beloved Jim Neely’s Interstate Bar-B-Que, tender pork ribs are slathered with a thick, sweet-and-tangy basting sauce, which also flavors the curiously delicious house specialty, barbecued spaghetti. This town even figured out how to barbecue pizza: Coletta’s Italian Restaurant, open since 1923, is this category’s self-proclaimed winner.
For all-around barbecue nirvana, show up at the cutthroat World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, part of the city’s annual Memphis in May bash, where more than 200 teams from around the globe congregate to grill their secret recipes on the Mississippi waterfront.
RENDEZVOUS: Tel 901-523-2746; www.hogsfly.com. Cost: large ribs $18. CORKY’S: Tel 901-685-9744; www.corkysribsandbbq.com. PAYNE’S: Tel 901-272-1523. COZY CORNER: Tel 901-527-9158; www.cozycornerbbq.com. CENTRAL BBQ: Tel 901-272-9377; www.cbqmemphis.com. INTERSTATE BAR-B-QUE: Tel 901-775-2304; www.interstatebarbecue.com. COLETTA’S: Tel 901-948-7652; www.colettasrestaurant.com. BARBECUE COOKING CONTEST: Tel 901-525-4611; www.memphisinmay.org. When: mid-May.
Where Blues Legends Began Their Careers
THE MEMPHIS MUSIC SCENE
Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.A.
Hailed as home of the blues and the birthplace of rock ’n’ roll, Memphis welcomes music enthusiasts from around the globe. They come to walk in the footsteps of Elvis Presley (see p. 872) and to see the haunts of blues legends Furry Lewis, Muddy Waters, B.B. King, and countless others. With its laid-back funk and unmistakable mojo, Memphis is the holy grail of American popular music.
1,000 Places to See Before You Die Page 137