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ednemo and I have returned from Graceland! We had a LOT of fun and got some much needed relaxation...
Day 1 - Woke up Saturday morning, showered, dressed, loaded car, got breakfast, got on the road...First stop, Mini-Graceland in Roanoke...Well, we would have if it were still there. We couldn't find it. We did see the giant star though...
After that, we gave up on Mini-Graceland...The guy who built it was apparently very ill and I'm thinking it was torn down or something, so we got back on the road. It was getting dark by the time we got to Knoxville, so no Sunsphere until the trip back. We got to our hotel around 1am. It was 12 hours of driving with about 2 hours of stops.
Day 2 - After getting up, getting ready, and checking out we headed to Cracker Barrel for breakfast where I gave the entire restaurant whiplash by walking to our table. I knew we'd be stared at, but it was kind of funny...Anyway, we ate, jumped in the car and headed to Graceland, picked up our tour tickets from the hotel and headed over.
Graceland reminds me of a small amusement park. They take your picture in front of a fake gate, give you an audio tour thing, throw you on a shuttle and drive you across the street and up the driveway. The driveway isn't that long. They drop you off, and you start the tour. The "mansion" is smaller than I thought it would be and you can't go upstairs. You get to see the living room, his parent's bedroom, the dining room, kitchen, TV room, pool room, jungle room, office, trophy room & raquetball court.
This is the living room...It's kind of out of focus because you're not allowed to use your flash. So most of my photos are a little fuzzy and some are kind of yellow because of the lighting. I haven't had time to fix them in Photoshop yet...
The self-guided tour thing is nice except when old ladies have theirs turned up all of the way and they're yelling to the rest of their party..."Look how big his shoes were!!!!" because they can't hear themselves talk unless they yell...
At the end of the tour you go to the "Memorial Garden" where Elvis, his parents, twin brother and grandmother are buried...
Then you're sent back to the shuttle for the ride across the street where they have giftshops, restaurants and 2 other museum things. They have the car museum with the pink Cadillac and other cars and another museum with their wedding clothes and other things, like Elvis' jammies and other concert outfits not used in the trophy room. And you get to see his planes. We went through those, bought some stuff and headed to the hotel to check in. Relaxed a bit then headed over to Sun Studios.
We got there just in time for the last tour. It was a lot of fun. You really only go to a room with displays and the studio itself, but it is very informative. I didn't really expect much and had more fun on this tour than the Graceland tour...The people working there were more our style and the tour was more personal and more informative. On the way back to the hotel we saw a lady so fat that she couldn't steer her car very well because her fat was oozing around the steering wheel. That was scary...
We headed back to the hotel after the tour and relaxed for a bit, then decided to venture out for food. Walked around, didn't find anything, so we headed back and the girl at the front desk recommended a BBQ place called Marlowe's. When I did a search of things in to do in Memphis, most of the hits I got were for BBQ, so we headed over. This place had the best BBQ we've ever had. Large portions for the price too. I got a half chicken meal that I was picking at in the call all the way home yesterday. We also got peanut butter & banana sammitches because we decided that we couldn't leave Memphis w/out one. With happy tummies we headed back to the hotel to relax and explore the hotel, then sleep.
Day 3 - Woke up early, headed down for breakfast, loaded the car, checked out and headed home. Stopped in Knoxville so I could finally see the Sunsphere.
ednemo has better pics on his camera because mine ran out of memory since I didn't have a chance to load what I had on it onto my computer before we left. Then we stopped off at his favourite knife store and headed back to Richmond.
So there you go...I'll try to post more pics later. ednemo has pics of the front gate at Graceland and a few other things so when I get those, I'll try to remember to post them.