On the southern edge of Nashville, a half-hour drive from the airport, strip malls give way to sprawling pastures. A wild turkey trots along an interstate ramp.

And a wooden sign welcomes drivers to follow a parkway into the past.

You have to slow down. You have to get used to seeing trees instead of billboards. We roll beneath a canopy of redbuds, past snowy stands of dogwood.

We fled Florida to travel to one of the country's most historic highways. The Natchez Trace stretches south from Nashville, through a tiny corner of Alabama, all the way to Natchez, Miss. It's 444 miles of pristine pavement.

In four days, we expected to find wildflowers and waterfalls. We didn't know about open-mike night at that country grocery, or the monument to a famed explorer, or the tiny shack where Elvis was born. We would track planets through a giant telescope, sleep in a log cabin, sip mint juleps in the manicured garden of a mansion.

Last year, 5.7 million people visited the Natchez Trace Parkway, making it the seventh most visited national park, ahead, even, of the Grand Canyon.

But we could drive hours without seeing another car.

The road is wide and almost straight, slicing south through forests and farm fields. It dips in some spots, crosses rivers and skirts small towns. Mile markers along the thick shoulders help track the trip.

You can drive the free parkway without stopping, or you can pull into short loops to picnic, read signs and see sites. You can stay in your vehicle, or park every few miles and hike into history.

TIME FOR A STOP

The first photo op, guidebooks say, is the double-arch bridge, a few miles outside Nashville. To appreciate the majesty of the architecture, exit the parkway, drive under it and look up.

``As long as you're doing that,'' a man on a motorcycle tells us, ``you might as well go on down the road and check out Leipers Fork.''

The town is a couple of miles off the trace, flanked by horse farms and country estates. A small strip of stores lines the main street: an antique shop, a candy counter, a worn-down diner.

And an old-time grocery called Puckett's that serves hot sweet potato fries and cold draft beer. Thursday nights, singers sign up to perform on a state-of-the-art sound system.

``Willie Nelson played here,'' a man with a ponytail tells us. ``Miley Cyrus shot her movie right out back.''

We sleep in a farmhouse the first night, Creekview Farm Retreat. A rooster wakes us at dawn. At 8 a.m., our host brings steaming biscuits and cheesy grits and books about the trace so we can chart our day.

An overlook above a deep valley, an old brick home and a tobacco barn top the list. We drive a bumpy remnant of the original road for a couple of miles through the woods, then pull back onto the smooth surface of the parkway.

On the second night, when we get to Tishomingo State Park, the log cabin we rent is warm enough that we don't need to light a fire. The shower is hot. And in the morning, four different bird calls echo outside our windows.

TAKING A DETOUR

We detour off the trace that afternoon to find an army of Confederate graves, to photograph a field of golden buttercups, to drive to Tupelo, to see where Elvis got his first guitar.

A cardboard cutout of the King fills the front window of the hardware store, where his mother took him to pick out his birthday present.

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