GRACELANDS, home of Elvis Presley. We headed up Elvis Presley boulevard , past Heartbreak Hotel,
The Lisa Marie, Elvis's private jet named after his daughter. He had another private plane as well with TCB on the tail
( taking care o' bizness )
and one of his cars on display.
Used to be the Pink cadillac.
We go to the RV park just down the road, within walking distance. This was fortunate because, the last time I was here the famous gates at Gracelands were down for cleaning.
This time they were up but open, so I walked down at 6.30am to get a good shot of them. Not a particularly good idea, Memphis is a high crime area.
Everyone has to be bussed into the Mansion from the souvenir area opposite, no one is allowed to just walk in. This was a very organized and state of the art tour. We were given headphones with numbers on. Each area had a number for us to tune to, and we could diverse for extra information if we wanted to.
Gracelands is a mansion sized house and has been left as it was when Elvis was there. He was an honorary member of the FBI and a black belt in Karate, so we passed through his target practice room and gym.
Anyone who is not an Elvis fan , may have the impression that this was just another pop star. He was not. He could sing for a start, and could also act. Unfortunately his manager Col. Tom Parker had a tight grip on what Elvis did, and made both of them a lot of money.
After Elvis died of a heart attack, brought on by PRESCRIPTION drugs, Parker came in the firing line for pushing too hard, and allowing the dependency on drugs to take over Elvis's life.
We got to the area with his working history,
it is full of awards, silver, platinum,gold discs. Covering the walls from floor to ceiling. 
His costumes ( you can even buy a copy in the shop, for a price).
All of his films are here.
Including the only two straight part ones that he made Wild in the country and CHARRO ( guess where my dog's name came from, it took me years to get the sound track for that)
Elvis always wanted to play straight parts, instead of the musical ones that he mostly did. They were the bread and butter films though.
There is even an area covering his army days,
he did his two years service, and Tom Parker kept his career going until he came out.
Most Elvis fans learned the German words to Wooden Heart, the song he sang for the film GI Blues.
We came to where he and his family are buried, flowers and tributes come in daily.
In August, which is when he died, this place is packed as fans make a pilgrimage to 'The King '
When we passed the stables and paddock they weren't open to the public. Since then Pricilla has opened them to the public. These contain the horses tack and riders clothes. Some of the original horses were rescued, some bought. Elvis's favorite , a golden palomino called Rising Sun was born in 1961. He was one of four. There are relatives of the original horses still at Gracelands. Sun's Reflection is related to Rising Sun .
The stables were built in 1939 by the original owners, and was bought by Elvis in 1957.
JOHN'S BIT ON ELVIS AND GRACELANDS
I went expecting to be overwhelmed in tacky and unimpressed with a singer that I remebered with some disdain, being much more into the Beatles and the Stones in the 60's.
Instead I liked what was on show. The presentation was excellent and I had not realised how hard he must have worked to satisfy his manager. Even the jungle room with it's green shag pile carpet worked as quirky style rather than tacky. I was also impressed by the fact that he did his two year tour in the army. Even though he lived off post in Germany with some of his family. Also he was a biker so that was another plus point.
Mind you during his life he was exploited and in death he is still a money making machine for someone, maybe Priscilla, hopefully some charities. After all Elvis gave away more than 200 Cadillacs to family and friends.
The Metal Workers Museum was worth the visit.
Along with elegant pots,
[ it is a piggy bank really - put your money on the brass cup and pull the lever]
quirky sculptures
and odd artifacts
they had a working foundry and blacksmiths shop. I was hoping to find some gunsmithing in progress but had to be content with a look at the special anvil that was used and a description of how a Tennessee long musket barrel was formed and forge welded from a short billet of iron. The technique had been lost and was rediscovered by an Arkansas smith who had been asked to make a replica barrel for an old gun.
As well as an entry charge we were asked for a contribution to the cat fund!
We took a tourist trip on a replica riverboat. We were seated on the top deck well before the departure time and as usual I checked out the engineering on view, Carol looks at dogs, I look at welds. WELL they were appalling. This was not welding, this was low flying sparrow shit. I consoled myself by thinking that they had done some DIY modifications to the superstructure, only to find that the hull was a DIY job in some ones backyard and the same person had finished off the superstructure after launching the boat.
As a City and Guilds Certificated welder I know that welding is mostly practice. SO this guy should have been well practiced by the time he got to the superstructure. I was not a happy camper thinking we were heading out on a collection of steel plates tacked together with snot and heading in approximately the same direction through force of habit!
The tour guide raised my anxiety level by punctuating his commentary with famous Mississippi river boat disasters culminating with the greatest loss of life when the Sultana went down killing more than the Titanic sinking.
We visited Mud Island to see the scale model of the Mississippi river created in layered concrete. The idea worked well and as we walked down the half mile of the model we got the feel of the big muddy as it wandered down by towns like Memphis and Vicksburg. The efforts of the Army Corps of Engineers to try to control the course of the river was also well documented.
This part shows the bridges and part of Memphis including Mud Island.
The reasons behind the efforts was not well covered, no mention of the politics that left one town on an unnavigable backwater while another had the channel deepened and kept by their docks. Some towns protected by levees; others allowed to drown in the annual floods as the snow melt raises the water level.
The riverwalk museum covered the history of the area and the river. The history of the boats started with the first rafts, through the days of the steam driven riverboats including the winner of many a race the Robert E Lee and finished with todays powerful pushboats and the string of barges they chug up and down the Mississippi with.
These strings run 24 hours a day, they are refueled and provisioned on the move and is by far the most economical way of moving bulk goods in the USA. The captains get more than $1000 a day which is pretty good money.
We finished off the day with tired and hot feet so it was only right that we had a paddle in the Mini Mississippi to end the day.
Arkabutla Lake
As Memorial day weekend approached and it is the equivalent of UK bank holiday we decided to get booked in somewhere to be sure of having a RV site somewhere.
Fed up with the noise of big city sites with train lines in earshot we settled on a campground at Arkabutla Lake. This area is under the control on the US Army Corps of Engineers who built the dam as part of the efforts to control flooding in the Mississippi valley. Well it was quiet and empty for the first night but even though the forecast was poor it filled up by Saturday mid-day. The site next to us had some kind of extended “redneck” family group. The men had the haircuts, the fishing habit [ big catfish!] and the pickup trucks. They only had one dawg with them though. It was a tiny tiny puppy who seemed to belong to a 5 year old girl. Carol found it difficult not to get involved when we heard it crying but when it got picked up by the little girl it seemed happy enough. The weather forecasters got it right and on Saturday evening the heavens opened and the thunder gods paid us a visit, the unstable weather is supposed to go on for a week.
Still we got out in breaks in the rain to see the beaver pond,
note the chisel points on the tree stumps created when the beavers fell the trees for food and dam building material,
and the sunken picnic tables, the water level is high in the lake due to all the rain.
Next stop Tunica, self styled Las Vegas on the Mississippi, for some poker and shopping then on to Vicksburg and some serious civil war stuff.
