damn, these people like elvis. but memphis would be kinda weird even without him.
welcome to memphis, home of graceland. and the peabody hotel, where ducks come out of a penthouse suite at 11am and swim in a fountain in the lobby all day before turning in for the night. and a restaurant called big foot lodge, which looks like a log cabin and has dead animals all over the walls to ponder as you eat. and a giant pyramid?
look close- it's there.
we weren't sure about the chicken or the egg on this one- elvis or memphis being a bizarre place anyway- but it seemed like everywhere we went it got a little stranger. the city itself is small and easy to get around with a tourist district that is packed into about one block and looks like that junk drawer you don't want anyone to know about. we stayed away, fearing getting hit in the face with neon.
dinner was tasty- burgers and pulled pork sandwiches at the only place in our budget range near beale street: bigfoot lodge. it is the home of "the yeti" a sundae containing 18 scoops of ice cream. ian had to try to get hungry despite the taxidermy delights, but not to worry- he didn't hurt himself. he was even happy after the meal.
after dinner we decided to walk along the river to try to burn some of the billions of excess calories we have accumulated so far on the trip. in between declarations that i was going to explode and would need liposuction the instant we got to la, the view was quite nice. there were a lot of bugs, though. a lot. we almost got nailed several times by dragonflies and later, looking at our pictures, ian remarked that people would not get the full effect without the explosion of bugs.
still, it was pretty, that mississippi. and we could see arkansas on the other side.
after the walk, we returned to our fabulous accommodations at the graceland camping and rv site. we opted for the cabin and were very glad that we did. it was barely larger than the car, but the most exciting place we have stayed. at 37 dollars, we considered it a bargain.
bernard also enjoyed his stay, especially hanging out on the swing and resting from time in the car.
he did feel a bit guilty about the no pets rule, but we told him he is a member of the team, not a pet, even though sometimes he has to sleep in the car.
this morning, we were ready for graceland. ready for elvis. we spent about an hour and a half enjoying the house. we paid just under twenty dollars each with both aaa and student discounts bringing it down from 22 each to see the house and grounds. we did not opt to go for the airplane tour or the vip tour, which was a whopping 55 dollars for all-day access and some thing mysterious called an "enhanced tour." we decided that an hour to an hour and a half with elvis would be enhancing enough. it was. ian was suddenly star struck about halfway through. i was lucky enough to catch it.
i am really glad that i saw the king's home, even if the tour was quite biased. it featured only the bright and shiny aspects of his life. these were interesting to hear about. especially the clips of lisa marie talking about her dad on the audio tour as well as the wall of large checks elvis had written to many charities- nearly daily, it seemed. however, it did seem strange that the only mildly controversial thing in the whole tour was that "sadly, when elvis's live performing career took off again, he and priscilla divorced in 1972." nothing about drugs or cause of death or the pressure of being so famous. it made me want to learn more about the rest of elvis and how on earth he made a house look like that WITH the help of a decorator. i thought decorators were supposed to be a good influence. yikes.
so, after our pilgrimage to the king, it was off to arkansas. where there appears to be nothing outside of little rock. i am writing this in a cafe near downtown, which we found at about 4:30 pm despite being warned when we asked for a nice internet cafe, "oh, my. i don't know if anything like that would be open that late." whew-ee. l.a. might be a medically dangerous culture shock when we arrive. but it is 5:50 now and we are still going strong and not thrown out in the street, so there maybe hope for arkansas yet.
tomorrow: we will sample the hot springs park famous fifteen dollar bath. lonely planet says, " it's great fun, but aveda it's not." we'll solve that mystery tomorrow. for now, we'll just be taking care of business in a flash. thanks, elvis.
stats:
tuna melts: 3- latest one just in! gas price per gallon in w. tennesse (premium): $2.75
nights spent camping: 1 1/2 (we needed sleeping bags for our cabin) incidents: 2 (flood and bee hitting the windshield and exploding in arkansas. the most significant thing we have seen in that state so far) population of arkansas outside of little rock: 0
song(s) of the day:
9-10: rachmaninov's third. happy birthday mom!
9-11: "beautiful" by christina. yes, aguilera. that song rocks.
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