We've found a new place to dwell...

It rained pretty heavily Monday night which is kind of a good thing in the coach. The sound of rain on the roof tends to lull one to sleep. Our destination Tuesday morning was Memphis - about 215 miles from the Nashville KOA. Suzanne had a conference call at 11:00 am so we did as much packing up as we could Monday night before going to bed and set the alarm for 6:00 am.  The rain let up enough in the morning to make the 10 minutes of work I had to do outside in preparation for departure a little less miserable and we were on the road by 6:40.

                                                              Ready to roll

   It continued raining for the next couple of hours, not heavily but enough so that I was unable to use the intermittent  setting on the wipers.  Btw, the coach has a cool intermittent wiper function where you push the button then push it a second time anywhere up to... I think a minute and it will set the wiping 'tempo' accordingly.

   According to our calculations we were right on schedule and all was fine until Suzanne realized her call was actually at 10:00 am.  Well... it WAS at 11:00 EST but we are now in the Central Time Zone and she kinda forgot that.  There was no way we were going to make it to Memphis by 10:00 so at 9:30 we pulled into a rest area where she took care of business for the next hour while I read a few more chapters of  Louis L'Amour's 'The Daybreakers'.  The cell signal wasn't great but we were able to establish a hot spot so that Suzanne could fire up her Mac and do what she had to do.

    By then the rain had ended and we arrived at the Graceland RV Park around 12:30. I had purchased two 3:30 pm VIP Graceland tour tickets the night before.  The woman at the RV park desk told us she thought the mansion was closed on Tuesdays so after pulling into our site and setting up I walked the 300 or so yards to the Graceland welcome center and confirmed that the mansion was indeed open.  Suzanne finished up work at 2:45 and we headed over for our tour.  While I like his music I wouldn't say that I'm a HUGE Elvis fan - but I've always thought it would be cool to visit Graceland so it's kinda been on my bucket list for a while. It didn't disappoint!

    Some photos I took during the tour...

                                                              The Living Room

                                                               Elvis' Kitchen

                                          Pool Room - I think they said it took a crew of 6
                                        ten days to hang the fabric on the ceiling and walls

                                                        The famous Jungle Room!

                       His pink Cadillac - one of MANY cars (and motorcycles) in the collection

                                       Inside the Convair 880, one of two jets Elvis owned 

                                                            and that are on display

   There were hardly any other people visiting Graceland while we were there and it kind of felt like we had the whole place to ourselves. We were the only people on the shuttle bus to the mansion, the only ones watching the orientation film and one of maybe three other couples walking around inside the mansion.  It was a unique experience. I was struck by how tacky, by modern standards, the decor inside the mansion was. Lots of paneling and, of course, shag carpeting. Most of the time during our tour was spent across the street at the expansive museum - a complex of buildings - one housing cars, motorcycles, trikes, golf carts and other vehicles. There is a building dedicated to preserving and displaying Elvis' Army clothing and other things associated with his time spent in the Army, another for his musical equipment and other personal belongings, another building displays clothing worn by later entertainers showing the influence Elvis had on how they dressed etc. Very interesting tour. Pricey....but interesting. 

    One more day in Memphis. I'll share more tomorrow.

     Thanks for reading the blog!