Graceland

No trip to Memphis would be complete without a tour of Graceland.

I guess?

This is another activity that had not been on my schedule, but the ladies in Nashville, the same ones who had recommended the National Civil Rights Museum, said that Graceland was worth a visit.

The Graceland website recommended 4 hours to complete the tour, and that was about how long it took us. It would have taken even longer, but we were both starting to feel drained. We skipped the section of the tour that included Presley’s planes.

The tour began with a visit to Graceland Mansion itself.

We wound our way through the rooms on the first floor and the basement. Happily, the tour guides allowed us to go at our own pace.

It was interesting to see what a celebrity in the 1960s and 1970s considered fashionable.

We also got to see the meditation garden, where Elvis and his family members are buried.

There were rooms upon rooms of memorabilia. It was actually overwhelming.

After a tour of the mansion, we went back to the main facility to tour some of Elvis’s collections… and view even more memorabilia.

There was his car collection…

His costume collection…

And rooms dedicated to his costume designers, the artists influenced by his work, his military service, his record label, his movies… There was literally no moment of his life that had not been recorded and preserved for posterity.

I found myself wondering how he would have been remembered if he had lived another 20 or 30 years. Would interest in his life and music have continued to be so fervent?

And would his music have changed with the times? Would he have been able to stay fresh and original, or was his music only perfect for that single moment in time in which it was created? Would interest in him have slowly faded as history moved beyond the 1970s?

Despite the fact that I have only ever had a mild interest in Elvis Presley, I did enjoy the tour. It was worth the quite exorbitant cost that we paid for it.

After our tour, we went to a local laundromat to get some laundry done, and then Greg made us filet mignon for dinner.