It's Pensacola Not Pepsi Cola (Florida)

Pensacola, FL

The night of sleeping in the front seat of the car left us with some creaky bones. I had a moment where I thought to myself that Danny Glover said it best with “I’m gettin’ too old for this shit!” Then I stood up and stretched, and my youth came back to me just like the skills of riding a bike do. We were not in the best of moods, but after a quick teeth brushing and the knowledge that we were no longer near New Orleans made us feel much better. The day was already better than the previous.

I called my great aunt Joan to see when she was going to be home in Columbus, Georgia and was informed that she would be home around four in the afternoon. We took it upon ourselves to kill time by exploring the gulf coast. We cruised along the scenic drive and enjoyed the view out the window as we passed through lovely neighborhoods filled with nice houses on streets that were laced with trees that spread across the roads. It was a great way to start the day and Florida was in our sights which promised to make it even better.

We made to the panhandle with the state beach in Pensacola as our first destination for the day. We made a quick stop at the Pensacola Beach visitor’s center for the standard bathroom use and quick scan of the brochures and maps and such. I saw a flyer concerning the recent oil spill and took it upon myself to ask the lady at the counter if the area had been affected. She let us know that a couple of weeks prior they had shut down one beach near the area, but it was a false alarm as the beach was up and running later that same day. This was good news to us, because swimming sounded fantastic. The lady was very nice and informative as she also filled us in with some information concerning Fort Pickens. The fort was part of the national park that also contained a few state beaches.

The sand in Pensacola is unlike any beach I have ever seen. The sand was so white it was almost blinding and all the while it was really something to gawk at. We arrived at the park kiosk and talked to the park ranger. She let us know that the fort had guided tours at ten and two. It was ten thirty. The ranger then told us that the beaches in the area were under watch for rip tides. Her next question was to where we came from. We told her we were from Vegas and she told us that we needed to swim at the beach with a lifeguard as if we have never swam in salt water before. I sort of laughed and played along. We then drove down to the Fort Pickens.

Fort Pickens was built from 1829-1834 and served its use all the way up to the 1940’s. It was used during the Civil War amongst other disputes and was always being renovated to keep up with the ever changing arms races. We picked up the self guided brochure, which walked you through the fort with little excerpts about each room and section. Even though it was early in the day the place was really creepy. It was filled with all sorts of tiny dark rooms and long, empty and dimly lit hallways. The place looked like it could have been the set for a horror movie. There were also original canons and lookouts and all sorts of other weaponry. We found out that Geronimo was even held prisoner in the fort for about a year in the late 1800’s.

The fort was designed in the shape of a pentagon and is now open on one side due to a fire breaking out and reaching a supply of gunpowder, thus causing the wall to explode. From the exterior of the fort a decent amount of the fort was hidden like a bunker in the sand. There were all sorts of interesting looking doors that popped up out of the ground, much like the TV show Lost. It was all really interesting and we spent the better part of an hour and half exploring the grounds.

The sun kept getting stronger and stronger and since we were so close to the gulf we put on our bathing suits and made our way for the beach. The beach was fantastic. The white sand was gorgeous and the water was fantastically warm. It was probably around the low to mid 80’s, but since it was so damn hot out it was still refreshing. The gulf was calmer than an ocean, but still had some waves; they just were no bigger than a foot at most. After spending the better part of an hour at the beach we realized that it was later than expected and we needed to get on the road. We still had a couple hours drive to make it to Columbus, Georgia and it was around three o’clock.

We made it to the car and something funny happened. I turned the keys and nothing happened. The onset of panic started to set in. The wagon had done so well and had made it this far, it would be a shame if something went wrong now. I quickly jumped into troubleshooting mode. I took the keys out and tried again. Nothing. I had forgotten to take the keys out of my pocket when we were swimming, so I thought maybe we should try Jen’s keys. Nothing. The headlights and radio still worked so the battery was obviously good. I then popped the hood and had Jen try to start it so I could listen to the starter. It wasn’t even cranking. This would signal the possibility of it being dead, but it would have been waning over the past couple of starts and it had always started strong, so that was a bit curious. I then popped off the fuse box just to check things out. A fuse was blown so I replaced it, but it was not anything that would cause the car not to start. Jen tried again and nothing happened. This is where the possibility of it not starting was serious. I then sat down in the front seat and due to luck I noticed that the car had been left in reverse instead of park. I shifted into park and the car started right up. Good old forgetfulness caused the failure to start. We were ridiculously relieved and let out a huge sigh of relief and shared a kiss and high five in celebration. On to Columbus we went, where a nice bed and my great aunt Joan was waiting for us.

Random Facts

Times the Scary Rip Currents of the Gulf Carried Us Away = 0

The Florida Panhandle is a Great Place.

Alligators Seen = 0

When The Saints Go Marching In (Louisianna)

Baton Rouge, LA

Before I begin tearing New Orleans a new one, I would like to tell you of a decent enough place to eat in Baton Rouge Louisiana. We found a place on Yelp called Louie’s Café. Louie’s was said to be a college diner staple. We saw a line outside, which is usually a good sign for the food to be good. We put our name on the list and waited for about 15 minutes or so. We sat at the counter and ordered up our food. The place was of the standard diner fare and when our food came it was pretty decent. I’m not sure if it was worthy of the high praise that we had heard of, but it was decent. Based on the portions of food to price though, I would say it was slightly above average. The small portions let us down as we were pretty darn hungry. We did however leave feeling very satisfied and it turned out pretty good. On to New Orleans we went.

New Orleans, LA

Things started out alright in Louisiana, as we had a good breakfast and New Orleans was always a place that I had wanted to visit. Things changed as soon as we started driving over water on the I-10 into the city. It was around this time that we noticed that the city was not focused on making it easy for unfamiliar drivers to navigate their city. The place is filled with signs that are incorrectly labeled and far to close to the exits that it is damn near impossible to get around correctly. When we finally made it to the exit we needed, we drove to the visitor’s center.

The visitor’s center was not much to look at, and consisted of a few brochures, but nothing exceptional, plus the people that were supposed to be at the desks were nowhere to be found. We made the best of what they had and grabbed what information we could. I even peeked over the counter at the desk and grabbed a fairly informative guide book with some maps in it. We then left the visitor’s center so we could head to the library, because we wanted to get online to find some info on the city and figure out what we wanted to do. As we pulled out of the parking lot we became lost immediately. One way streets are fairly stupid, especially when they are not in high traffic areas. Despite trying to follow the directions that Google maps GPS navigation gave us, we still had trouble getting around.

The people of New Orleans have a funny way of welcoming you to their city and they like to thank you for obeying the traffic laws by yelling, honking, and even flipping you off. Many of the great citizens greeted us by showing one, or even all of those appreciations that we felt greatly wanted in the city. We felt so damn welcomed that we wanted to show our appreciation by punching people in their throats. I have a theory on why all the people in New Orleans are assholes and it is as follows:

1. Hurricane Katrina hit forming two groups of people in the city.

2. Group A figured out that this was a perfect time to escape.

3. Group B sat around looking for handouts.

4. Group B then stayed there for five more years.

5. Group B has been crapped on for so long that they can’t help but feel like crap.

6. Group B then take out their frustrations on everyone they meet.

7. Group A lived happily ever after.

8. There is also a small group of people who stuck around, but learned to stay inside their houses and not bother anybody, who we will consider to be in group A.

Following the welcoming committee, we proceeded to the library, which happened to be the only one in the city that was open on a Sunday. I made a right into the street that I needed to turn on, but due to the stupidly placed one way sign that is only visible while you are on the street, I went the wrong way on a one way street. I was even ferociously approached by a security officer that pulled maybe an inch from our car to let us know what we had already discovered and we were in the process of flipping around. So he made a point to let us know we were going the wrong way by flashing his lights on and treating me like I’m a four year old on a tricycle. He then proceeded to speed off. Eventually, we did actually make it to the library.

At first glance the library looked as if Katrina had just been there, but there was a light at the end of the tunnel as we saw a sign that said the library was open during renovations. The scaffolding that surrounded the library left little room for parking but we pulled up and Jen hopped out to make sure that it was in fact open. She walked through the scaffolding and came to the door to be greeted by a sign that told us that the library was closed due to the air conditioner being broken. So, after our great journey to find this forsaken place, the light at the end of the tunnel was just an optical illusion.

With our luck being so great in the city, we decided to press it a little more and head down to the sculpture park that resided outside the city’s art museum. At this point it was already unbearably hot and it was barely ten thirty. We grabbed some bottles of water and soaked our bandanas in some ice water and threw them around our necks. The heat was hovering somewhere over a hundred degrees, which wouldn’t be all that bad if we were in the desert, but in the south that temperature is accompanied by a muggy humidity level of at least eighty five percent making it feel well worse. As soon as we left the air conditioning of the car the sweat started to bead down our faces. We powered through the heat and walked around the sculpture park for about an hour.

The sculpture park had a lot of interesting work from a great variety of artists. There were works from the well known likes of Claes Oldenburg to artists that were unfamiliar to me. Despite the crippling heat, we enjoyed walking through the park. From here we decided that it was far too hot to be walking around outside, so we started to think of things that we could do wither indoors or in the car. We decided that we would go to a movie, but nothing was playing for a couple hours, so we decided to drive around and look at some of the architecture in the French Quarter and surrounding areas.

We drove around and took in the part of New Orleans that was pleasant to be around, which is of course the buildings. From the distinctively unique graveyards to the French inspired home fronts, the buildings and inanimate objects around the city were great. If we could just get rid of all the pain in the ass people, it could be a place that I would want to be around a lot more. The above ground vaults in the cemeteries were creepy, but very interesting as well. They were all so different from one another that they were as much of a work of art as the sculptures we saw earlier in the day. The fabulous French inspired balconies hanging off the sides of buildings were great to look at as well. I really wish that the people were less shifty looking, because it seems like there is much to be proud of and appreciative around the city, but no one around seemed to care much.

Following our self guided exploration through the city, we decided it was time to get lost again so, we took it to the streets and meandered our way to find the movie theater. The maps looked simple enough, but the street signs thought otherwise. The signs in the city are extremely small and are conveniently placed on the opposite side of the street which makes it damn near impossible to read until you are right up on the street. Needless to say, we missed more than one turns. We eventually came to a railroad crossing that started to flash. We were a couple cars back and we waited patiently for the train to pass. A funny thing happened after the train passed, as the lights stayed flashing for a bit too long. This caused the few cars in front of us to impatiently, and rather idiotically, drive around the arm bar across the tracks. I wanted no part of this so I stopped at the bar. This caused the cars on the other side of the tracks to start driving over the tracks. A line of about twenty five cars drove over the tracks. When the line ended cars from behind me started passing me over so that they could get over the tracks. Finally, after being honked at a ridiculous amount of times I decided that maybe the bars were messed up and I proceeded to drive over the tracks. As we drove over tracks I could see a second train heading towards the road. I stepped on the gas a bit more and went on my way. The line of cars behind me kept on crossing, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the train had to put its brakes on. We didn’t hear any crashing noises, but who knows, besides a couple less New Orleans natives wouldn’t be missed, would they?

We eventually made it to the movie theater. The plan was to see The Other Guys and then sneak over to see Inception. The plan went off without a hitch. The Other Guys was surprisingly better than I had expected, despite being fairly cheesy at parts, it had some pretty funny jokes and Will Ferrell rarely disappoints. Christopher Nolan has done it again as Inception was quite the movie. It was a good mix of highly intense visuals and action with a great sci-fi plot that, like most of his movies do, it keeps you guessing and thinking throughout the whole movie. It will most likely be up for some awards as it had that great mix of great acting along with a stellar script and film making.

The sky was dark when we walked out of the movie theater and I wanted to see Bourbon Street lit up at night, so we headed back downtown. The downtown area reminded me a bit of Las Vegas with all of its lit up buildings illuminated by the fluorescent neon bouncing through the alleyways. As expected we made a couple of wrong turns and somehow ended up driving down Bourbon Street. It was jam packed with intoxicated people that were not too worried about getting out of the way of our car. We weaved our way through the sea of people and as we thought about finding a parking spot, we came to the conclusion that we didn’t really feel comfortable leaving our car anywhere. Between the people and the heat we had come to the end of our wick and the candle still needed to make it through the night so we could find a place to sleep.

We had planned to sleep at a state park not too far from the city. The key word in the last sentence is planned, and just like everything else that happened on this day it didn’t work out quite as planned. The state park was not to be found. There were no signs or anything, so we went to our backup plan. As we drove towards our second campground at another state park, we found ourselves driving in circles. This was very frustrating as it was creeping closer and closer to midnight. We decided that we would just hit the highway and stay at a rest stop. We came to the first one around twelve thirty and with the way our luck was going, it did not allow overnight parking. Normally I would say to hell with that and just sleep anyways, but they actually had a security officer on the grounds, so that was pretty much a no go. We then drove to the next one that was about thirty miles down the highway. We arrived at the rest stop, but had to keep on cruising due to it being closed and blocked off. The next Rest stop wasn’t until Alabama. We made it Alabama around one thirty in the morning. We were so damn exhausted and finished with the day that we didn’t even bother to clear out the back to sleep. We crashed in the front seats as we were both fed up, uncomfortable, and unhappy. In fact that pretty much summed up how we felt about New Orleans in general. Despite our hellish stay, I am willing to give New Orleans a second chance, but only if we visit with someone who knows their way around the town and can chauffeur us where ever we go.

Random Facts

Alive Armadillos seen = 1

Missing or Closed Louisiana State Parks = 2

Places we tried to sleep but were unable to = 7

States We Spent Less Than 24 Hours in = 5

Remember when it was a triumph to spell the word Mississippi.

Mississippi

Things I knew about Mississippi before we visited.

1. The Mississippi River runs along the western border.

With this little amount of knowledge that we had, Jen and I expected to roll through Mississippi fairly quickly. This all changed when we arrived at the visitor’s center in Tunica, MS. We needed to use the restroom, so we made a pit stop and figured we check out the center and grab some info on camping and what not. A nice lady greeted us as we entered the doors. She was nice enough to give us some good info on a place to camp and hooked us up with some good general information on Mississippi. She told us of the city of Vicksburg, which had a nice Civil War National Park that consisted mainly of the battlefield, and of many other places that we should try to visit on our way through the state. We stood around and talked to her for a bit, and she even offered us some soda and juice for the road. She was a very nice lady and I got the impression that not many people bothered to stop in, as she was hanging out with a friend. I was very glad that she let us in on all the good stuff because otherwise we would have missed out on one of the surprise hits of the trip.

Arkabutla Lake, MS

The lady at the visitor’s center told us that Arkabutla Lake had some campgrounds and that the lake was pretty nice and there was a bunch of stuff to do around the lake. This sounded like a good idea and relaxing a little bit sounded nice, and swimming didn’t sound too bad either. The lake was about thirty minutes from the highway and we even saw a turtle taking its sweet time crossing the street on the way up there. Luckily, it was close enough to the other side that it wasn’t in jeopardy of getting smashed into turtle soup. When we arrived at the lake, we drove around and checked out the campgrounds. We settled on the primitive sites, since they were cheaper and there was no one else there.

We set up our tent and decided that a dip in the lake sounded really nice, especially since it was hot and muggy out. The lake looked damn nice and we couldn’t wait to cool off a little bit. We walked the short trek through the beach and set our stuff down. We walked down to the shoreline and instead of being greeted by a nice cool lake, we were treated to water that was the temperature of a warm bath. It was sort of ridiculous how warm the water was. At first we almost didn’t want to fully submerge ourselves, but after a minute or two we decided that it was better than standing around being hot, and at least the breeze on our wet bodies cooled us down. All in all, the lake felt good despite being rather warm. We swam around for a good twenty minutes or so and proceeded to the foot shower to wash off the sand. On route to the car, we made a pit stop in the restroom and noticed that there were some pretty sweet showers inside. This pleased us immensely.

Dinner was next on our list of things to do, so we looked through our food supplies and came up with a nice supper that consisted of some beef and vegetable soup along with a bag of white rice. After eating we decided to get in the tent for some shut eye. It was at this moment that we realized why there were no other campers at the tent campground. It turns out that Mississippi stays relatively hot and muggy throughout the night. This was our introduction to camping in the south and was the start of sleeping in the heat.

The next day we were awakened with a nice blanket of sweat on our bodies and never did a shower sound so good. As we packed up the camp so we could head over to the showers by the lake, a moth decided to land on Jen’s hand. The moth must have really liked the salty taste that was on her finger, because it stayed there licking her hand for a good five minutes or so. When Jen shook the moth off, it didn’t want to leave and even after it was shaken off, the moth flew right back like Jen’s finger was covered in crack. We finally were able to shake the moth and we hit the showers. After the shower, we headed down and as we drove out of the park we noticed that we had a hitchhiker in the form of a grasshopper. He was stuck on our windshield wiper and hung on for dear life all the way into town. The grasshopper was hanging on the wiper for about thirty minutes or so, and took off as we went into Wal-Mart to get some ice.

Vicksburg, MS

Vicksburg was a welcomed surprise which had not only a great battlefield, but was also the place where Coca Cola was first bottled. The soda had been developed in Georgia and was only available in fountain form until Joseph Biedenharn got the great idea to bottle it and sell it on his own, with the permission of the Coca Cola Company that is. The old factory is now a museum that had some good information as well as some nice memorabilia. Following the factory we drove up to the Vicksburg Battlefield. Since it is a national park, I flashed the national park pass and we were able to do the driving tour for free. The driving tour was sort of cool, but it was mostly just monuments dedicated to the different battalions that fought. The big payoff came when we arrived at the Cairo Museum that was inside the park.

The Cairo is a union ship that was sunk in 1862 during a battle. The ship was sunk and was left at the bottom of the river for about a hundred years. In 1956 a couple of historians and explorers set out to find the wreckage. It wasn’t until 1960 that they had made the discovery and found the wreckage. In 1964 they devised a plan to tow what was there to Vicksburg. The ship is now put back together using most of the original pieces, because the cold depths of the water preserved the boat really well. It is really cool to walk inside of the ship, and to look at cannons and stand on the same wood that soldiers stood on. It was really surreal and exceptionally well kept together. Along side the boat is a museum that holds a bunch of artifacts that were found in and around the wreckage. There was everything from bottles and jugs of medicine to shoe shining kits. There were all sorts of tools and other mechanical parts that were used on board the ship. Dishes from the crew as well as the officers were on display to show the differences between them. It was all very interesting and amazing to look at all the old artifacts and to read about how some of the stuff was used back then. It was an amazing stop.

We then drove to another state park to camp out for the night. We found out that the park had showers, so we figured that we would be okay sleeping out in hot and muggy Mississippi. We came to a place and the registration office was closed so we followed their instructions and drove the campsite and set up our stuff, with the plan to pay in the morning. At the registration office there were signs for bears amongst other things, which was rather surprising to us. We found a campground and set up the tent. The mosquitoes were out in full attack mode so we set up quickly. The campsite was pretty creepy. The sky was a little sketchy looking and we were a little scared that it might rain, but we left the top off anyway as it was just too stuffy in there with it on. All through the night there were tons of noisy bugs buzzing all around. We even heard some weird animal noise that I can only place as some sort of bird species. It crept pretty damn close to the tent as well. Seeing those bear signs put our minds in a weird place and between that and the heat, it took us a long while to fall asleep. Needless to say we made it through the night and packed up and headed for the showers. The showers were once again greatly appreciated and set us up nicely for our adventure into Louisiana. We were sad to leave Mississippi, as it was a truly beautiful state. Most everyone that we met were very pleasant and welcoming. Having known so little of the state before we entered, it was a great surprise to find that we had such a good time while we were there. We would love to see it in the late fall or early spring when it would actually be nice to camp and hang out.

Random Facts

Birds Hit With the Car in Mid Flight = 1

Dead Armadillos Seen in Mississippi = 13

When an Armadillo Gets Run Over, It Looks Like a Ripped Up Leather Bag.

I See, You See, We All See, Tennessee

Nashville, TN

Driving into Nashville we noticed that something wasn’t on our side, and that something is known as the weather. It was rainy and overcast the whole day. We didn’t have much of an execution plan for Nashville, but I had hoped to see the Grand Ole Opry along with the other famous music related sights in the area. Due to the serious flooding they had in the not so distant past, the Grand Ole Opry was closed. This wouldn’t be such of a bad thing if the building was just closed, but the whole street that it resided on was closed off. We couldn’t even drive by the place and snap a picture, as everything on the block was shut down. It was saddening as I had hoped that Nashville was going to be a fun stop, but we were left with a decision to make. We looked at the sky in between rain showers and decided that there was not much of anything to do so our stop in Nashville turned out to be a very short stay.

On our way out of town, we figured that today would be a good day to do some laundry. It was a good way to maybe dodge driving through the rain and it was at a point where we had maybe one pair of underwear left for each of us. Little has to be said about the smell of our laundry bag that was full of hot, sticky, humid drenched clothes, other than the obvious notion of them being rather rank. We came upon a machine that was a quadruple load commercial washer and was fairly cheap. We decided to give it a try. We packed all of our clothes into the one washer and let it roll. The washer even had a sweet red wooden balled lever that was used to lock the front load window shut. It looked like something out of a cartoon, but it sure did get our clothes clean.

While the laundry was being done, we made a few phone calls and caught up on some reading. Doing our laundry in a laundromat has been something that we have become to enjoy. Not only do we get to take a little time to ourselves and read or check up on stuff and people via our phones, but it also forces us to fold and pack away all of our clothes. In Vegas we always had a washer/dryer in our house or apartment so we never had to visit the laundromat. It has become a nice break from driving, where we could sort of just slow down time and take an hour to ourselves. Who knew that doing laundry could be so relaxing?

As we did our laundry we were introduced to the characters of Tennessee. The people of Tennessee that were walking around the laundromat reminded me of characters in movies and cartoons. King of the Hill was spot on when they picked up on the touches of southern/redneck/hillbilly type of persona. I overheard a couple of conversations that were as if Joe Dirt were having a conversation with himself. They were all nice enough people, but those accents just made it hard for me to take them seriously. There was a bunch of “dang olds” and “I reckons” and “damn rights” thrown around like they were footballs on Sunday. This was our first real taste of that type of person and we were excited to get deeper down into the south to experience more of it.

Memphis, TN

We drove towards Memphis in hopes that the rain would die down a bit for us to camp, because there is nothing worse than setting up a tent in the rain and then having to sleep in it. We found a campground in a state forest. We checked out the park and went to the visitor’s center. As I stepped out to look at the bulletin board to see what was going on in the park, I noticed out of the corner of my eye a couple of cages set up off in the distance towards the woods. After grabbing a little printed out map of the forest, I drove the car over towards the cages. I stepped out of the car and walked over to the cage and was pleasantly surprised that there were two owls in the cage. They were so cute to look at, as they followed us with their giant eyes everywhere we went. One of the owls was a giant and the other was either a different species or just a baby, as it was about a third of the size of the other. We hung out talking back and forth with them and listening to them make sounds before we decided that enough was enough, as we could have spent all day just hanging out with the owls. We checked out the campground and it seemed nice enough, but we had gotten to talking and decided that a bed sounded really nice. It had been a good while since we slept in an actual bed. We thought about it and it wasn’t since Portland, Oregon that we had slept in a real bed.

So we drove a bit on the highway and found a Knights Inn motel that was set at a reasonable rate. It felt like such a luxurious place compared to sleeping on the ground for the majority of the last few weeks. We showered up and made some sandwiches and soup in the room with our little burner stove. It was really a nice little detour that allowed us to be pampered for a bit. We were excited that the motel had a sign that read free breakfast, so in the morning we hot stepped it up to the office to grab some food. We arrived to only be disappointed, as the motels idea of breakfast consisted of two small bottles of Sunny D, some Little Debbie honey buns and muffins, rice krispie treats, and some coffee. Despite being let down we filled our pockets with most everything that was laid out and headed back to the room. If we didn’t eat it for breakfast at least we had some free snacks to grub on.

With our amazingly disappointing breakfast past us, we headed towards Memphis. We arrived in Memphis a little before noon and decided that we needed to fulfill the empty space in our stomach. We had been wanting to eat some good Memphis BBQ and this was a perfect excuse. We looked online and found a place that had great reviews. Payne’s Barbeque was the name and making delicious food was their game. We ordered up some chopped pork sandwiches, because in the south it isn’t called pulled pork. We ordered two sandwiches, two drinks, a side order of baked beans, and a bag of chips, which all totaled the much welcomed price of ten dollars. When the food came out I was a little taken aback as the sandwich had a very curious looking green slaw piled on top of the pork. I should have known not to doubt the sandwich, because the chopped pork was amazing and the green slaw was tangy and so damn delicious. It was easily the best chopped pork sandwich I’ve ever eaten and probably the best pulled pork as well. The place looked like a dive, but the food made up for it. After thanking the cooks for a great meal, we headed down to the waterfront so we could devise a plan of attack for the city.

First on our list was to hit up Beale Street. We headed down to the area and parked the car so we could walk around for a bit. Even at such an early time in the morning, the area was hopping with people playing guitars out on the street and a pretty decent band playing in a little park. It was great to see such vibrant music coming out of every corner. We walked up and down Beale Street and when we returned to where we started we noticed the Gibson guitar factory. Unfortunately, the factory was shut down for the day and tours were not being given. As we walked up to the factory we were greeted by a gentleman by the name of Jeff. I was a little apprehensive to talk to him, assuming that he was a homeless guy, but he seemed harmless enough and was very polite. He told us that if we poked our heads up against the glass of the factory, that we would be able to see into the building. We glanced in and looked at all the tables set up and were looking at all stages of guitars from skeletons to ones that were just lacking the finishing touches.

We chatted with Jeff for a bit, as he told us that the motel where Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot was just around the corner. He then proceeded to let us know that he gives walking tours to people, and then came the proof that he was indeed homeless as the back story came out. He told us of his hardships and that he did the tours to make a couple bucks here and there as the shelters in the area charged money to stay. We would have loved to give the guy a couple bucks, but we had no cash on hand. He was understanding enough, and told us he was going to head over to the Elvis statue to try to earn a couple bucks by taking pictures of tourists.

It was at this point that we started to understand why the blues came out of Memphis. Unlike other cities that seemed to put blame on everyone but themselves, the down and out people of Memphis just seemed like they were trying, but just couldn’t get over that hump. From driving through the streets of the city, we got the impression that most of the town was living paycheck to paycheck just barely getting by. There was never a sense of neediness, just a real hard look at reality. It is a hard thing to put into words. It is not that I felt a sad for them, but I could really feel a great deal of empathy for the area.

We then drove over by the historic Orpheum Theater and the proceeded to head over to the Lorraine Motel.

The Lorraine Motel is the sight of Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination. Since the shooting the motel has been made into a civil rights museum. Turning the motel into a museum has been the subject of great speculation. We met a lady by the name Jacqueline Smith who has been protesting outside of the Lorraine Motel for over 22 years. We talked to her about why she was protesting and just how she has kept up with it for so long. After the assassination, Jacqueline, who had been a resident of the motel, was kicked out along with many others to make way for the museum. She had been and still is protesting, because she feels that the motel should be put to use in a way that is more in the spirit of Dr. King. Part of me sides with Ms. Smith, but another part of me is glad that the motel is being preserved for its historical significance. Either way we couldn’t find it in our hearts to visit the museum despite the fact that it would probably be very interesting.

Graceland was next on our list of things to see and the fact that the cheapest ticket onto the grounds was around thirty five bucks, we were strictly in the business of just driving by to see the place from the street. The house was huge and as we drove by, we had hoped to get a picture of the famous gates with the musical notes on them, but they were propped open and we were left without the chance of snapping a picture. We did however see the wall surrounding the grounds that had all sorts of notes and signatures to the king scraped on written on the bricks. It was quite beautiful to look at. Had we been bigger Elvis fans, it may have been worth the money to visit and if we ever come back with some extra cash, I think it would definitely be fun explore. Tennessee on the whole was surprisingly a really fun and beautiful state, to which we definitely want to visit again.

Random Facts

Times We Crossed the Mississippi River = 13

Walmart Count = 12

Nights Slept in a Hotel = 5

People With Gold Teeth = 6