From St Louis we went ahead to Memphis. We try to get up as early as possible, but we always drive 'til 10pm so we sleep 'til 9 or 10am. Then it's easy time til we find a store to get breakfast and some free internet to upload google maps to our tablet, because we don't have a garmin. So we drive with Maja looking at google maps (sometimes the gps signal recognizes us and we see where we are on map) and US road altas. We usually hit the road at 12am and drive on. We stop at interesting places like lakes to take a dip and we have a scenic highways and byways guide so we take those too.
We drove to Memphis directly to downtown Beale Street in front of the Elvis statue. Local street people welcomed and told us what to see. Gibson guitar factory, cafes, Hard Rock cafe, BB King bar, all the life is concentrated on that street. Then we went to see the SUN studio, where Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and also U2 recorded music. Final stop was Graceland, Elvis's home. That's a big piece of land in the city with a house and pool and they have also 2 horses there now. We didn't go on the tour but we walked along the road and went for a Elvis fried banana peanut-butter sandwich across the road, which is great. All the time we were listening to Elvis in our car.
Maja's fafourite
new
Beale street, I think New Orleans is similar to this street full of music, blues in the park,...
The SUN studio
Rockabilly stile dinner across the street of Graceland, the banana peanut butter sandwich
Graceland entrance
Tupelo is a nice old town with lots of green. We arrived late and visited Elvis's birthplace in the morning. It's a humble little house just outside the main street. They were poor. When he was 3, they moved on. When he made some money with first music group he was singing in, he bought a house for his parents. Elvis was the only child, his twin brother died at birth. When he came back to Tupelo after many years for a concert he did, the land and his birth house was for sale. He agreed to donate money, if the government would buy it and build it into a park. In the park are also a neighborhood church they moved two blocks and a museum. It's nice to see what kind of environment Elvis grew up from.
Presley's house in Tupelo
With Elvis on board we drove on to Houston Texas. We took the Natchez Trace Parkway, some 350 km down to Natchez to see the Mighty Mississippi. It's lime driving through a park. There are trees all along the road and trimmed grass. Just beautiful. When we arrived in Baton Rouge, the capitol of Louisiana, we figured Houston is still a long drive away and went for a steak and hit the bed.
Natchez Trace Parkway.
hurricane 2011
house in a french village
Natchez Trace Parkway all the way
Natchez Mississippi view
Mighty Mississippi
Old Steamer
Smith-Bontura-Evens House (107 Broadway St.) is the home of Robert Smith, a free African American who operated a carriage business in Natchez. The substantial Greek Revival townhouse testifies to the business success of Smith in Natchez, where almost half of the state's free African American population resided in the last decades before the Civil War.
It is so good to bee free, without a telephone and to have only freedom and the road on my mind. With my baby beside me.
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