This is Oklahoma? Where's Nicole Kidman on a horse?

Day 3

We had thought we’d swing by Graceland this morning, look at the house, then drive onto the Civil Rights Museum. However, the Elvis, Inc. people are crafty, in that you can’t get anywhere near the house unless you pay the $20 charge and take the official Graceland bus over to the place. We figured, what the hell, we just came all the way out here, we’ll do the tour thing. Graceland is… not all it’s cracked up to be. Apologies to my sister and everyone else who told me to go, but… eh. It was tacky, but not quite as over-the-top as I could have hoped. I liked the pea-green shag carpeting on the ceiling, though. That and the large number of very ornate posters that were left by his grave site. I'm talking days of work were put into these things. I don't know if that's touching or weird.

Unfortunately, this left us with no time to go to the Civil Rights Museum, which looked extremely interesting. It’s housed in the former Lorraine Hotel, where Martin Luther King, Jr, was assassinated in 1969 in room307. That part of the hotel is unchanged, and looks exactly the same as it does in the picture taken minutes afterward, with all the people pointing towards where the assassin was. It was really, well, creepy, and gave a slightly more sobering portrait of Memphis. I recommend it to anyone who is there.

So, Arkansas is…. Flat. The Eastern part, that is. Pretty dull. However, it is the start of States That Kelly Has Never Been To. We stopped in Little Rock for lunch, where we had to ask the question, where are all the people? Ben? Did you see anyone where you were there? It’s a good sized town, and there’s lots of buildings and cars, but not a single person anywhere in the middle of a Thursday afternoon. We felt like we were in the middle of 28 Days Later, and Bill Clinton’s former mistresses were going to come out of closets with bright red eyes, going for our brains.

The good part of Arkansas is the Ozarks, about 2 hours northwest of there. We found Altus, which is the wine capital of Arkansas, found the one vineyard that was still open, woke up the one guy working there, and I checked another state off my list of places to drink wine. We also drove through Alma, Arkansas, which is apparently the spinach capital of the world. That’s at least what it says on the statue of Popeye on Main street (let’s just say one-horse town is a little too big to describe Alma). We of course got our pictures taken with him for posterity.

Ok, Dawson, I will back you up right now when you say Oklahoma is pretty. Because, at sunset, where there’s trees and lakes and a sky that these city girls haven’t seen so colorful in years, it is really pretty. Unfortunately we were also hungry, and there ain’t much to find in Eastern Oklahoma. We tried Checotah, which the sign helpfully told us is “Home of Carrie Underwood, winner of American Idol,” but apparently Carrie left town for a reason. I have no other tales to tell for today, unfortunately. We’re holed up in a cheap hotel in Oklahoma City watching reruns. Life is exciting sometimes.

Photo explanations: Us going down a trolley-only street in Memphis, a sign near Graceland, Erin and Adina frolicking with the cows in Arkansas, and photos with Popeye in Alma

Southern Hospitality

Memphis is fun. We went out to Beale Street last night, the Bourbon Street of Memphis. There was music wafting out of every bar and giant signs saying what kind of barbecue was their specialty. We had an extremely loud cover band play during our dinner, which begs the question, do cover bands think that they'll ever become famous? Because they really shouldn't.

A random guy on the street stopped us and said hi. When Adina complimented his cowboy-style shirt, he decided that he had to take us out to meet his friends at a nearby bar. We spent the night chatting with four very Southern, very fun guys who explained to us where all the stereotypical Southern rednecks come from (Eastern Tennessee), the importance of college football down south (apparantly the NFL is for wimps), and how just putting something on a grill isn't 'barbecue' by any means. Today, Graceland, then out to Arkansas.

Tennessee is loong.....

10 minutes into the morning, we went into Tennessee. And we have yet to leave…. It’s a big-ass state.

Erin realized this morning why she could never live outside of major metropolitain areas - she can’t handle coffee that costs less than $2. The road broke her spirit this morning, forcing her to pick some up at a roadside gas station.

We finally listened to the mix cd’s that Chris and Timmy gave Erin. I especially like the note on the cover – “Graduate school: It’s like looking directly into the bulb of a high-powered flashlight for two years, only more expensive.” Nice, boys, nice.

Road music is an odd thing. Sometimes it makes perfect sense, like listening to NPR while driving through the Shenandoah Valley, which makes us feel smart, cultured, and proud of some parts of America. Then there was listening to Latino hip-hop and dance last night while going through small towns in Virginia that had street names like “Backwater Alley.” That put me more in mind of being in a foreign country, and not one I’d like to be in, either. This morning was William’s karaoke mix of the best of Abba, Journey, REO Speedwagon and Pat Benatar, which I’ve found is good music for any geography.

As some of you know, I have a goal of tasting wine from every state in the country. Today we checked off Tennessee, at Stonhaus Vineyards, which was, well… eh. I also picked up a bottle of wine at the supermarket from Virginia. Don’t know if it’s any good yet.

We stopped for awhile at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, which is where that photo of Erin was taken. And folks, if you’re going to go to school in the South, this seems like a good place to do it. They have the coffee shops, the row of Irish pubs, the Thai food, the Mexican, and the Quiznos, all within a few blocks of each other. We didn’t actually make it to the rest of the city, but there was a billboard overhead as we got on the highway with a cartoon cowyboy waving and saying ‘Yee-haw, come to Chevyland,’ all in rainbow writing, and that was good enough for me.

Erin made a new speed record for driving from Nashville to Memphis. We did 220 miles in a little under 3 hours. She’d like you all to congratulate her. And our hotel in Memphis? Well, we got there, found that much of the a/c didn’t work, neither did the ice machines, then we found the room. You know that scene in Annie Hall where Woody Allen comes over to Diane Keaton’s apartment to kill a spider, then runs out of the bathroom, saying ‘That spider is the size of a Buick!’ That was me, about an hour ago, until Adina came to my rescue and made the spider go away. Two rooms and two failed door locks later, we’re ready to go out and explore the town. Have a good night, y’all, I’ll be talking to you later!

Day 1 - going crazy after 2 hours....

Day 1 of our trip took us into Pennsylvania Dutch country. After several jokes about the nearness of the Amish to the town ofIntercourse, PA, we passed by Hershey, where Erin promptly plastered her face to the window trying to catch a glimpse of the Holy Land. We didn’t stop. We thought it would be wise for her sanity, and ours.

After a Cracker Barrel lunch, we crossed the Mason-Dixon line into Maryland, and it turns out, Chris was not kidding. Immediately all the signs for Ihop turned into signs for Waffle House. A new North-South divide is born!

I’ve found a good alternative to books on tape: podcasts. I’ve been downloading slate.com’s daily article podcasts for a week now, and we spent awhile listening to how Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was based on real-life competitiveness in the candy industry. Those with itunes should check it out. Yay, free stuff.

We managed to stop for dinner in appropriately-named Christianburg, Virginia. There was a guy next to us wearing a shirt with “Dixie” on the front and a Confederate flag on the back. The rather overweight guy in front of us got up twice to go to the buffet to get more biscuits. Ah, the South. I look forward to more artery-clogging goodness in the next few days.

Very, very late, we finally pulled into our accommodations. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to the super-cool hostel in Asheville, but found a lovely dingy little room in Bristol, Virginia with internet access and cable, so we can blissfully shut off our minds for the rest of the night. Good night folks, be talking to you soon.

Road Trip pre-show

Thank you guys for stopping by. this is an experiment. Experiment in how many towns I can find internet access in, and an experiment in whether or not I'm going to follow through with writing a blog out every day for the next 12 days or so. For now, enjoy a few leftover zombie pictures, and I'll be talking to you from the road. Bye!