Geo: 34.9586, -90.0428We left North Carolina and drove all the way across Tennessee today to a suburb just south of Memphis but across the state line in Mississippi. I drove most of the way again today while Phil worked on grading papers and other school stuff in the car. Graceland is on the south side of Memphis, and the closest Hilton property we found is about ten minutes away, but in Mississippi. We will go see Elvis' home tomorrow. Tonight we had more great barbecue at Memphis Barbecue Company. It is a lively and crowded restaurant with good service and good food including pork rinds served for the table at the beginning of the meal. Memphis BBQ is heavy on the pork side, but the brisket was delicious, too. One of the waiters, not ours, had ... read more

Geo: 35.5984, -82.5531Overnight, I woke up about once an hour and looked outside to see if it was raining yet. Hermine has been downgraded to a tropical storm, but the weather report still shows she is going to mess up our plans to visit the Outer Banks. It was hard for us desert-dwellers to make a decision about staying while the storm passed over the area or leaving before it got any closer. We finally decided to leave Charleston without having seen much of it at all and take the highway that runs perpendicular to the coast to get away from the effects of Hermine as soon as we could. I was concerned that even though the wind was going to be manageable, we were on the end of a peninsula in an area that was ... read more

Geo: 33.5648, -81.7319We left Atlanta late this morning after going to Dallas, Paulding County, to see if we could find out any more about the Strickland ancestors in the area. We stopped at the Dallas Public Library and were allowed to use their genealogy room which had a few good resources for Phil. During the morning, we drove past another Strickland street sign. This time in Dallas, Georgia. We left the Atlanta metro area by mid-day for the drive to Aiken, South Carolina. This is the first time either Phil or I have been to South Carolina. We chose to stop in Aiken for the small town feel and to stay at The Willcox which is one of the top-rated hotels in the world by Travel and Leisure magazine this year. It is a beautiful hotel ... read more

Geo: 33.7481, -84.3909We drove from Meridian to Atlanta today stopping in Birmingham at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute to learn more about what was happening in the South while we were children. We also saw the 16th Street Baptist Church that was bombed in 1963 killing four girls attending Sunday School. The museum is beautifully crafted and does a great job of explaining all the parts of the civil rights struggles of the 20th century. Near the end of the self-guided tour, one of the docents pointed out a photo from March 2007 that she was particularly fond of with then Senator Barack Obama pushing Fred Shuttlesworth in his wheelchair across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma while Bill Clinton stops to talk to him. We arrived in Atlanta before rush hour started but the roads ... read more

Geo: 32.365, -88.7031We've been on the road for most of three days and arrived in Meridian this afternoon. The drive was fine the whole way with overnight stops at the Hilton Garden Inn in Amarillo then the Hampton in Sulphur Springs. The traffic north of Dallas slowed us down some, but when we got east of the metro area, traffic thinned out and sped up. The best food we found on the road was lunch in Childress yesterday at Top Notch Texas BBQ. When we arrived, the restaurant looked closed from the outside. The front door opened though and one person was inside eating. The service was great and food even better.We're looking forward to seeing the Rogers folks tomorrow. ... read more