Vacation, Continued...

So the first night in Memphis we camped at the Meeman-Shelby Forest State Park. The park was right on the Mississippi and reminded me a lot of my summer camp (except nobody was trying to make me accept Jesus Christ into my heart). We picked out our camp spot before we went to dinner and in the 30 minutes we took to set up, the dogs managed to get covered in burrs. When we camp back from dinner it was about nine and we were greeted by the deafening sound of the cicadas. It was louder than the fireworks the night before. There was also some weird larvae caterpillar thing going on on the ground.

When I woke up in the morning I had a ton more bug bites. Those bugs didn't give a shit about bug repellent, they're too punk rock for that. At this point I would say I had about 60 bites, I shit you not. Although I was pretty itchy I didn't really care that much because we were on our way to Graceland.

Graceland was awesome, of course. But I will say that it was exactly as I expected. It neither disappointed or exceeded my expectations. I think it was because I have seen it so much on the travel channel that I knew exactly what was there. I took a lot of pictures with my new camera phone but you have to hold it really still so some came out pretty blurry. I will say that the jungle room has fully inspired me to put a waterfall in my house or maybe more like a water drip. I have to admit, though it makes me look like a sentimental baby, that when we first walked into Graceland I was so excited I almost cried.

After Graceland we got some excellent BBQ at Tops BBQ, proudly serving Memphis since 1952. They have a very limited menu but I find that is the sign of a good restaurant. If you can keep people coming back for the same four things for over fifty years, they must be good.

Once we finished our lunch we headed over to the Stax Museum of Soul. It was fabulous. Since Stax is just about my favorite record label of all time, I was totally looking forward to this and it did not disappoint. In fact, it far exceeded my expectations. Aside from learning all these cool things about the history of the label that I didn't know (like that at one point they lost their entire back catalogue to Atlantic based on a handshake deal), I touched the three track that Otis Redding recorded on. Tell me that is not cool.

After that we headed over to Sun Studios but we would have had to wait an hour for the tour so we decided to come back the following day. To give the dogs and our bug bites a break and to get a humidity free nights sleep, we checked into a motel for the night. We also at more BBQ at Corky's which was very tasty, though I am not sure it is quite worthy of the "best barbecue in town" title.

Okay, later on Memphis Day 2.