After leaving Red Bay, AL where we learned from a local resident that we should stop in Tupelo, MS to visit Elvis Presley's birthplace. We did and visited his birth place and home as well as the Turelo Hardware where Elvis' mother purchase his first guitar instead of the 22 cal. rifle he wanted. I beleive Elvis rode with us from Tupelo to his Memphis Mansion as we could hear noise on our RV roof and cargo bay. According to stories he was a shy person by nature so he did not come out and visit with us during the trip. Our pet, Trixie did bark several times during the trip between Tupelo and Memphis which confirmed Elvis was likely onboard. We did play his music on the Sirus Elvis radio station. When we arrived in Memphis and checked into the Good Sam's RV Park next to Graceland I believe we did see Elvis running from behind our RV toward his mansion.
We found Graceland to be much more interesting than the ghost stories about Elvis. He was an unique and interesting person and his home reflected that. It was quite nice and could be referred to as an stylish mansion. His furnishings reflected his celebrity status since money did not seem to be an object. All of his gold records and plaques are on display along with various awards, clothing, stories of his career by his friends and business associates. The home is furnish the same as when he passed twenety five years ago. We missed the 25th celebration of his life by a week, however there many gifts of appreciation from people from all over the world still on display from the week before. The mansion tour takes about 4 hours to see everything. It is a self guided tour with the aid of a recorded narration of various rooms and displays. You access them on personal earphone sets. You can revisit the various displays and rooms as you desire and catch one of the many shuttles back to the tour center where you purchase your tickets to begin the tour. It is a worthwhile visit for anyone that likes Elvis' music and want to know more about his lifestyle and music career. We came away from the tour with a whole different perspective on this great and talented artist.
The tour center has an Elvis' Auto Museum, his two jet airplanes, Lisa Marie and Hound Dog, the latter a small business type jet. Lisa Marie was his toruing jet and I believe a 707 or one of those. You are able to go inside both planes. Also, there is a museum on Elvis' clothing and why he dressed as he did. It is narrated by a very close friend of his so there is some personal stories. Of course there are resturants and gifts shops galore at the tour center, which by the way is directly across the street from the mansion. Our RV park was right behind the tour center so we could walk to it through a back gate. Really convenient!
We spent two days at Memphis and on the day we left drove into Little Rock. What I tell you next will probably surprise most of our close friends and family that know us well. Okay, we visited the Clinton Library. It was mostly out of curiosity though we did find the building to be interesting, modern and in a nice setting along the Arkansas River. We spent about two hours inside viewing and reading the displays. I think it could have been better presented had someone other than President Clinton doing all of the narrations. (Possibly we had been influence by our visits to the great Americans homes who had founded our country in Viginia earlier in our trip) A third party would have been better in our opinion. Most of what happened during President Clinton's administration we were aware of and our take of his narration and print brushed over some of the events not so flattering to him which might be expected. He seemed place blame on the lack of some of his and Hillary's accomplishments on the other political party. There is an adjoining college campus for students to study political topics. What I found a little unusual was that the library gift shop was offsite and on the edge of downtown and not in the library building. It was about a quarter of mile away but the library did have a shuttle to take you there if you wanted to shop. We passed in order that we could get to our next destination which I believe was a KOA 20 miles into Oklahoma. We actually missed a closer KOA because you know who was on the cell talking with his brother. We did we needed to get to Amarillo, TX on the upcoming Friday so we could visit my sister, niece and her family who now live in Dalhart, TX where the land is so flat you can see the curve of the earth!
We made Dalhart on Saturday, August 24th and had a great visit with Bobbi, Cindi, Tim and all of the kids. It was great to see them and catch up on everything and get see the town we have heard so many humorous stories about. The reason they live in this panhandle town is that Tim's job with Hilmar Cheese Company in California sent him there to help with the opening of their new cheese plant. It is rurual and the closest shopping towns are Dumas about 50 miles away or Amarillo about 80 miles. We spent a couple extra days in the Amarilloa area as a little altenator problem developed just as we arrived in Amarillo. Thank God, there was a Freightliner dealer there to repair it, but as in Reno they had to order a part. For those interested a diesel motorhome altenator with labor and diagnosis' is almost one bill, like in a thousand. The good part about waiting was we got to visit some extra days with my sister and niece who came to Amarillo. We had a nice lunch at Furr's.
We visited the Quarter Horse Museum before heading out of Amarillo to Holbrook, AZ and then into Laughlin, NV where Carole, aka "Gamblin Annie" proceeded to win $720 to end our trip before returning to California. She began the trip by winning $200 in the Reno lay over and $1400 in Minnesota at Mystic Lakes. That about covered the cost of our diesel fuel for the 7,009 mile trip.
It felt so good to get home. That was a long time away (74 days). But we hope, God willing, to do it all over again next year. We're thinking of NY, Maine, etc. We met lots of great people (lots of full-timers) on our trip. One lady was on her way to Africa to be healed by witch doctors (true!) and another one was here from Nova Scotia (Carol really liked her) and so we picked her brain for next years trip. We met a couple from South Dakota who were so sweet we have been e-mailing with them. Most of the RVers we met were friendly and eager to get to know you. A tip for any trip like this: drink only bottled water. At one site we were washing dishes and the water was brown.
Until next time, signing off and back to our normal routines. John & Carole
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