Part Five: Erie to Houston
The Two-Week Loop: 1. Houston to Nashville › 2. Nashville to Louisville › 3. Louisville to Columbus › 4. Columbus to Erie › 5. Erie to Houston
Part four dropped us in Erie at sunset with the northern half of the loop behind us. This is the fifth and final leg, the long road home, and it had no business being as good as it was.
Pittsburgh is the anchor of this one. Seven floors of The Andy Warhol Museum, the largest single-artist museum in North America, is not a stop you squeeze in between other stops. It’s an argument, made at length, about what art is allowed to be, and you come out of it looking at billboards differently. The city then spent the rest of the day being generous with its rivers, its parks, and a skyline view that makes you understand why people who leave Pittsburgh keep coming back.
West Virginia sent us underground into a real coal mine, which is the kind of stop that quietly rearranges your opinions about the people who did that work for a living. Tennessee handed us a full day of Dollywood, because the trip needed a day where nothing meant anything. And then Memphis got the last word, running from a one-room schoolhouse in Brownsville to a barbecue shack, to Stax, and finally to the balcony of the Lorraine Motel at the National Civil Rights Museum. That’s a heavy way to close a loop. It’s also the right way.
Trip Route Map
The Stops
The Andy Warhol Museum – Pittsburgh, PA
Seven floors in Warhol's hometown holding the largest collection of his work anywhere: soup cans, silkscreens, the floating Silver Clouds room, and the whole pop-art story.
Allegheny Landing – Pittsburgh, PA
A small riverfront sculpture park on Pittsburgh's North Shore, between the Clemente and Warhol bridges, dedicated in 1984 as one of the country's first urban riverfront sculpture parks. Free, with abstract art scattered across the lawn and about the best downtown skyline view in the city.
Highland Park – Pittsburgh, PA
Pittsburgh's grand hilltop park in the East End, built by Edward Bigelow in 1889 around two city reservoirs. Come for the restored Victorian Entry Garden and its fountain, stay for the flat reservoir loop, one of the best easy walks in the city.
Tamarack Marketplace, Beckley, WV
A big red-roofed showcase of incredible West Virginia-made crafts, food, and art, right off the turnpike near Beckley. One of our favorite stops on the entire trip!
Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine
A retired coal mine you ride into on a man-trip car, guided by former miners, in a Beckley city park with a restored coal-camp town up top.
Dollywood – Pigeon Forge, TN
Dolly Parton's Smoky Mountain theme park, mixing coasters with Appalachian crafts, bluegrass, and a lot of cinnamon bread.
West Tennessee Delta Heritage Center & Tina Turner Museum – Brownsville, TN
A Brownsville heritage center that holds the Tina Turner Museum, set inside the one-room schoolhouse she actually attended.
Elwood’s Shack – Memphis, TN
Beloved red shack in a Lowe's parking lot slinging BBQ, trout tacos, pizza, and breakfast in Memphis.
Stax Museum of American Soul Music – Memphis, TN
On the site of the studio that made Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, and the Memphis soul sound, rebuilt as a museum, with Hayes's gold-trimmed Cadillac parked inside.
National Civil Rights Museum – Memphis, TN
Built around the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. King was assassinated in 1968. The balcony is preserved as it was; inside, the galleries trace the civil rights movement from slavery forward. A heavy, essential stop.
The Ones That Got a Wave, Not a Post
A couple of quiet driving days and a night in Hope, Arkansas carried us the rest of the way home. Final tally for the whole loop: five legs, a bit over two weeks, thousands of miles, and one government shutdown that locked a lot of gates and never actually stopped us.
That closes the circle. If you came in at the end, the whole saga starts back at part one, Houston to Nashville, and the next detour picks up down on the Gulf in Houston to Corpus Christi.