Saturday, August 2, 2014 It’s hard to believe it’s August already. Where did all the summer go? We wanted to get an early start and headed out at 8:15 this morning. It was a sunny day with temps in the upper 80’s. We had 316 miles to go today to get to Memphis. Once we left Oklahoma, we had all of Arkansas to cross. We crossed over the Arkansas border around 8:45.
The terrain became more hilly as we neared the Ozark Mountain area.
Arkansas was heavily wooded through most of the state. Traffic was heavy on this Saturday with lots of semi-trailer trucks! We got stuck in a traffic jam in eastern Arkansas and were delayed about 20 minutes. It was a parking lot. There has been a lot of construction all throughout Arkansas and the roads have been horrible. Once traffic got going, we crossed over into Tennessee around 2:15.
Through all the construction, Auggie snoozed away the afternoon in the backseat.
We drove across the Mississippi River where we saw barges sitting along the shore.
As we entered Memphis, we saw this church…The First Pentecostal Church! It was huge!
From there, we went south to Elvis Presley Blvd. where we found our campground, Graceland RV Park.
Our site was on Blue Suede Lane.
We set up and got ready to tour Graceland. Our campground was actually part of the Graceland Complex. We walked through a gate next to our site, through a parking lot, and were at the Ticket Center for Graceland. How much more convenient can you get? On the same grounds is the Heartbreak Hotel.
From the ticket center, we boarded a shuttle that took us across the street to Elvis’ Mansion.
We were all given audio players and headphones to listen to the self-guided tour on audio. We took the self-guided tour of his home and grounds which lasted about an hour.
We got to see all the rooms of the house except Elvis’ bedroom. This was his living room.
The most amazing part of the tour was his record and trophy room.
We ended our tour in the Memory Garden where the graves of Elvis, his parents, and grandmother are buried.
It was a beautiful place. There were many gift shops and you could pay more to see his car museum, airplanes, Tupelo (his birthplace), and see movies of his concerts. All we really wanted to see were his mansion and gravesite, but we did get a peek at his planes over the fence.
2014 celebrates the 60th anniversary of Rock and Roll.
We really enjoyed our tour of Graceland. Back at the campground we sat outside before dinner. There was a nice breeze blowing and it was very pleasant in the shade. We had chicken on the grill and waited for the sun to go down. We’ll go outside around 9:00 to see if we can see the International Space Station going by. Tomorrow we have another day of driving with our destination being Jemison, AL.
