The interstate will get you across Mississippi quickly, and reveal almost nothing of it. To actually see the state, a traveler must leave the highways for the network of scenic byways and back roads that wind through its landscapes, small towns, and quiet corners, rewarding the unhurried with a fuller picture of the place.

These roads pass through the varied faces of Mississippi, the flat expanse of the Delta, the rolling hills of the north, the pine forests of the south, the coastal lowlands. Each region reveals a different character, and the back roads offer intimate access to all of them, at a pace that allows the landscape to register.

The small towns along the way are part of the reward. A back-road journey passes through communities the interstate bypasses, places with their own histories, their own diners and shops, their own quiet claims on a traveler's attention. Stopping in them offers a taste of local life that faster travel never permits.

The pleasure of the scenic byway is the pleasure of unhurried discovery, of a journey undertaken for its own sake rather than merely to arrive. Mississippi rewards this kind of travel richly, offering beauty and character to those willing to slow down and seek them. The back roads make the case, mile by unhurried mile, that in Mississippi the journey is very much worth the drive.