Monday, August 30

Last Wednesday, we went to a number of spots in Memphis. Our first stop....Graceland, because Ron wanted to go there. I could have passed on it, some of Elvis' songs are okay, but, I was never a fanatic about him, he was before my time, I was into the Beatles. For those of you who have never been there....well, to Ron and I, at $30 each, it was a big waste of money. It is definitely a tourist trap with 11, count them, ELEVEN gift shops!!! Come on, get real!!! The mansion tour was not too bad, even though we only got to see the bottom floor and basement, the top floor was off limits. Each one of us on the tour received ear phones and a small recording device so we could hear about the history of the house and other things about Elvis. Elvis, his mom, dad and grandmother are buried on the property in the meditation garden near the pool. His twin brother died in infancy and although his body is not there, he does have a small monument to him.

Tuesday, August 24th

Yesterday morning, Ron went to check to see if our mail arrived and it did, so, thankfully, so we packed up and left the Trace behind and on towards Memphis. We are now settled into Cherokee Landing. For anyone who has their Thousand Trails magazine, you might want to note a change in the directions to get here. We're coming in from the east, so one of the directions says it's about 8 miles to the turnoff to the park....it is 6 miles and the totem pole we were told to look for was not there. So, here we are driving down the road with nowhere to turn around....we finally found a wide spot to turn off and I called the ranger office to find out if we, indeed, had missed the turnoff. Yep, we did and when I asked about the totem pole, she said someone stole it. I told her I was going to write a letter to the corporation and tell them they needed better signage and she told me a sign was coming soon. I asked her where we could turn around and wouldn't you know the person at the other end of the phone had just been there a month and had no idea where we could turn around...GRRR!!!

Well, we unhooked and Ron took the Jeep to see if he could find a place, he was back shortly and all he saw were driveways shooting off the main road. So, his solution was for us to back the bus up into the driveway we saw behind us. Normally, I wouldn't have protested, if the roadway behind us had been perfectly straight! BUT, there was a slight hill coming up from behind us and I could just see some logging truck barreling up the hill and see us right in front of him, backing up or worse, turning into the driveway! But, Ron was insistent, assuring me that everything would be okay, he would be in back directing me, so here I am, backing up, backing up, backing up, all the while praying no one is coming our way....I finally started backing up into the driveway, having to go forward and backward a couple times and still no traffic. Finally, he tells me to stop, he has to move the Jeep on the other side of the road so I can go forward and start going the other way. Mind you, I'm still sticking out in one lane and Ron is taking his time getting back into the Jeep. I'm over there saying, "hurry up, hurry up, I want to get out of the road!!!" I finally got turned around and got out of the way off on the side of the road and during all that time, not one car or truck came barreling up behind us, thank you God!!! Since I was in the driver's seat, Ron let me drive back to the turn off, and by the time we got there, I had a big line of vehicles behind us, because the road was narrow and curvy and I didn't want to miss the turn a second time. I managed to make the turn okay, since it was tricky coming from the west and arrived here safely.

This park, just like Natchez Trace and Carolina Landing are forgotten parks in the system. They badly need to upgrade the roads, making them wider and pothole free. There is only one small area that is full hookups, and most of the sites are very unlevel. We ended up parking in the W/E sites, because there were more to choose from and we found a nice mostly level one in the shade which is a big plus.

Today is laundry day for us and resting from traveling. Tomorrow, we're going to visit Graceland, as well as getting our drug tests done for Amazon.com and doing some other sightseeing. The weather is cooling down somewhat, with temps in the 80's. It's not bad outside right now, as long as you stay out of the sun. Tomorrow should be a good day.

Tomorrow morning, if our mail comes in, we are leaving here and headed west about 150 miles to another Thousand Trails park about 65 miles away from Memphis. Ron wants to visit Graceland and I want to visit Beale Street. So, we'll have more pictures to post of our adventures there.

We had dinner at a restaurant called the Country Boy Restaurant. It's been in business since 1968 and the food was excellent! I had the blue plate special and for $7.99 I got the seafood gumbo with shrimp, crawfish and sausage in it. I also got some fried green tomatoes, (YUMMY!!!), green beans, fried apples and cornbread. Ron got some friend cajun spicy catfish and his was good too. We really lucked out finding and eating in that place! After dinner, it was getting dark and we were still about an hour away from home, so we stayed off the Trace as far down as we dared, if it hadn't been getting dark, we probably would have gone on down that same road, but, didn't want to come to a dead end in the dark and have to turn back, so we got back on the Trace and came on back.

This last picture is something we saw on our way to and from Hohenwald. It is a unique house, to say the least. It looks like multiple families may live there, but, who knows.

Very cool looking yard art, don't you think?