Starkville, MS

We spent the day in nearby Starkville, part of the “Golden Triangle” of Columbus, Starkville and West Point, MS—the marketing label was coined in the 1960s to promote economic development. Starkville is home to Mississippi State University, a sprawling campus that is the beating heart of this community, with an insatiable appetite for athletics and a number of excellent museums  It’s Thanksgiving break, so car and pedestrian traffic was light, and parking readily available.

Out first visit was to the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library. Originally in Ohio, then Illinois, the library was relocated to Starkville in 2008 after Grant scholars at Mississippi State lobbied to house and maintain the collection. Fun fact: Ulysses and Julia Grant were invited by Abraham and Mary Lincoln to attend Ford’s Theater with them the night Lincoln was assassinated, but the Grants declined. The library also has a wing dedicated to Abraham Lincoln. Fun Lincoln fact: He patented a flotation device to assist steamboats across shallow sandbars and shoals. Although the device was never commercialized, Lincoln is the only U.S. President ever awarded a patent. 

Next was the Templeton Music Museum, a delightful collection of 200 musical instruments, 13,000 records and 22,000 pieces of sheet music amassed by Starkville businessman Charles H. Templeton, Sr. 

After lunch at Uno Mas Tacos y Tequila, we took a stroll around Chadwick Lake, then found another gem of a museum, also on the MSU campus. The Wade Clock Museum houses more than 400 early-American clocks from the early 1770s on. 

Making it a four-museum day, we finished off at the Oktibbeha County Heritage Museum, a charming tribute to civic pride. Starkville’s famous sons and daughters include football hall-of-famer Jerry Rice and Donna Lynn Spruill, the first woman to land a plane on a Navy aircraft carrier. We were the only visitors, and had a long chat with the museum staff about the area and life in Mississippi. We are always surprised—and probably shouldn’t be— that those in the tourism sector on the waterways are well aware of the Great Loop and are very interested in our experiences traveling through their communities and states.

We skipped dinner to make the 6:00 PM showtime of Napoleon, the new Ridley Scott film about Bonaparte and Josephine. We liked the movie, but felt like it was missing something that we couldn’t quite identify. If you enjoy watching grandiose battle scenes on the big screen, complete with all of their glory and gore, this one’s for you, and Kathleen and I both loved Rupert Everett’s performance as the perpetually-scowling Duke of Wellington.