Memphis – Meanderings & Mind Munchies

Shelby Farms Park Hyde Lake Loop and Beale Street

It was another overcast day with the threat of thunderstorms.

After several days of touring museums, Greg and I were eager to get some exercise. Once the thunderstorm threat diminished, we headed to Shelby Farms Park to walk the Hyde Lake Loop, which is a 2.4-mile loop around a man-made lake near Memphis.

The trail was a little boring, but we enjoyed seeing a variety of birds.

This great blue heron let us get so close we could almost have touched him.

These fellows are apparently called American avocets.

Beale Street

No trip to Memphis would be complete without an evening spent on Beale Street.

After our walk around the lake, we headed to Beale Street for dinner and some live music.

I had read that Memphis is famous for its barbecue, so I did a little Google search to see which bar on Beale Street had the best barbecue, and the winner was BB King’s. So off we went.

As expected, the barbecue was fantastic. Greg and I split a full rack of ribs.

The music was good, too. We learned something interesting about Beale Street. Unlike Broadway in Nashville, where the live music starts as early as 10:00 a.m., Beale Street doesn’t really come alive until after 7:00 p.m.

We were lucky that BB King’s had a band that played from 4:00 p.m. until 7:00 p.m.

After finishing our dinner, we moved on. Our next stop was the Rum Boogie Cafe, which we had been to once before on our Mississippi Cruise.

I stepped out of the bar to get this photo, and the guy guarding the door wouldn’t let me back in without paying a cover charge, which I couldn’t do because I had left my purse inside the bar!

Since it wasn’t yet 7:00 p.m., we chatted with a British couple that we met while we were waiting for the band to take the stage. They were also doing a tour of Tennessee before heading to New Orleans, so we had fun exchanging notes about what we had seen and enjoyed on our various travels around the state.

When the band finally took the stage, we were amused to discover that two of the three band members were either from Pennsylvania or Philadelphia.

It was an enjoyable evening, but I have to admit that I don’t feel as comfortable on Beale Street as I did on Broadway. Beale Street has a much grungier feel, partly because there are fewer tourists and more folks just loitering.

Anyway, we headed back to the campsite early because we have a long drive tomorrow.

Park City, Kentucky, here we come!

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…

This display wrapped around three walls of the room.

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.

National Civil Rights Museum and Sun Studio

We started our first day in Memphis at the National Civil Rights Museum.

This activity had not been on my original plan since I am not a huge fan of museums. However, some ladies we met in Nashville had highly recommended it, so we decided to trust them.

I’m so glad we did.

The museum is part of the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

However, the museum is not solely about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It is a fairly detailed recounting of the African American struggle for equality from the early days of slavery in the 1700s all the way until the 1970s.

It was incredibly moving and informative. As I was making my way through the exhibits, I marveled at the strength, persistence, incredible courage, and resiliency demonstrated by African Americans in this country as they have fought for basic human and civil rights.

And I couldn’t help thinking about what it could teach me as I struggle to oppose the destruction of human and civil rights by the Trump Administration.

I learned that violence is not necessary to effect change.

I also learned that it is important to hold true to my values and not let an unjust, immoral system keep me from doing what is right.

I also learned that there is power in numbers.

On the advice of someone we met earlier today, we gave ourselves about 4 hours to go through the museum. We needed every minute.

One of the last exhibits in the museum was the original room where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr stayed the night he was assassinated. It was eerie to look over the balcony where he was standing when he was shot.

Sun Studio

After touring the National Civil Rights Museum, we headed to Sun Studio for a tour.

This studio tour was similar to the Studio B tour that we took in Nashville.

In fact, we heard the same story about Elvis Presley’s first studio recording session, which prompted me to ask our tour guide which studio that event had actually taken place in. He assured me that it occurred here, not Nashville, and I believed him.

Apparently, Sun Studio is still in operation today. Our tour guide is one of the musicians, and he named some of the famous musicians who have recorded in the studio within the last few years. Pretty cool.

On the road again…

Greg and I are about to head out on our first camping trip of 2025. We’ll be doing a six-week trip through Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, with most of the time spent in Tennessee. Here is our tentative itinerary:

3/31 – 4/5	American Heritage RV Park	Williamsburg area
4/5 – 4/10	Waynesboro North 340 Campground	Charlottesville, VA, area
4/10 – 4/11	Pioneer Village RV Park	Port Chiswell, VA, area
4/11 – 4/18	Riverbend Campground	Pigeon Forge, TN, area
4/18 – 4/23	Spacious Skies Belle Ridge	Monterey, TN
4/23 – 4/28	Raccoon Mountain Campground	Chattanooga area
4/28 – 5/4	Elm Hill RV Resort	Nashville area
5/4 – 5/8	EZ Days RV Park	Memphis area
5/8 – 5/11	Thousand Trails Diamond Caves	Park City, KY, area
5/11 – 5/14	Louisville South KOA Holiday	Louisville, KY, area
5/14 – 5/17	Seneca Lake Park and Campground	Cambridge, OH, area
5/17 – 5/18	TBD	PA, somewhere

Child #2 and Child #4 will be holding down the fort for us. I’ve outfitted both of their bedrooms with fire escape ladders in case they set the house on fire while we’re away.

Tennessee, here we come!