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Published: October 28th 2023
I just finished reading an interesting novel, and the story involves 3 or 4 different people over several years. The author’s approach, which works for the book, is to tell part of the story from one player’s perspective, then tell another player’s story from a different time, sometimes historical and sometimes current. It works in this story, largely because each segment begins with a heading telling the time. Nevertheless, it sometimes confuses me.
Then it occurred that our blog is going similarly, but without the timeline clues of a heading, so I think it best to start each segment off with a paragraph telling where in our trip the segment is meant to describe.
So far, we’ve described our journey from Lynden down to Yuma, where we spent last winter, then continued on to most of our time in Texas, where we’ve become officially residents. Then we skipped most of our travel to Nashville to describe our stop there. Then we backtracked to describe our stops in Austin, Weatherford, and southeastern Oklahoma.
In the process of this blog, we skipped over most of the trip down to Yuma, including stops in Missoula, Dillon, Idaho
Falls, and Brigham City. Then, between Oklahoma and Nashville, we skipped all our journey through Missouri, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, and back through Knoxville. Since Nashville, we’ve been to Memphis through Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and are now in Flagstaff, Arizona. Every stop on the way has been enjoyable and memorable, and well worth telling a story, and Natalie took a whole armload of photos, so we will do so eventually, I hope. We are on our way to Yuma for another winter of warmth, and hopefully be able to catch up with the story and fill in some blanks.
So now, I’ll resume the story after our visit to Nashville, which was the last stop we wrote about in this blog, and eventually return to the stops we haven’t written about yet later.
Our next major stop after Nashville was Memphis, but we stayed at a nifty little park on the Arkansas side of the Mississippi River, in a town called West Memphis. West Memphis, Arkansas isn’t quite the tourist destination like the other Memphis, Tennessee is. It’s easy to get confused, but except for the state border of a river running
through it, it’s pretty much all the same city. Most important for us, though, the traffic west of the river is much nicer, and everything we wanted to see was just a few minutes away.
West Memphis Arkansas is along the Mississippi River. The river itself is very low compared to its normal level, deep enough for normal river traffic, and there was plenty of commerce chugging up and down the river around the clock. Most of the traffic was tug boats pushing huge barge rafts of as many as 20 barges all tied together, but they chug along silently and with very little wake. Once these cargo tug and barge combinations get started, they don’t stop until reaching their destination several days later. If they need supplies or fuel, supply ships come to them, almost like a navy underway replenishment, because stopping and starting these huge vessels takes a lot of time they don’t have when they have markets to meet.
The Mighty Mississippi River, Mark Twain’s school, was beautiful. We stayed at Tom Sawyer’s RV Park and it is right along the bank. They even have very nice park benches right at the river, and we
made a point to use a bench every day we could. It was a very nice and peaceful way to spend an evening reviewing our day.
The river has overflowed its banks, including at this park, as one photo shows the worst flood here in May, 2011. The park is even built to deal with possible flooding: The laundry and restroom facilities nearest the river are in portables that can be disconnected and moved behind the levee a mile or so away. The park’s website even has some photos of people canoeing around in the park
We did take a paddlewheel cruise down the Mississippi River for the Mark Twain and Rebecca experience, meanwhile learning the city and river history of the area. Of course, our boat’s paddlewheel was just for looks; the boat runs on a conventional boat engine, but the experience is nostalgic anyway.
Of course, the real reason we had to stop in Memphis was to visit Graceland, Elvis Presley’s home, and we spent a very enjoyable day there. The home itself is most impressive and of course our biggest attraction. It is so well worth the cost and full day spent
there, even if you aren’t a huge Elvis fan. You will learn a lot about the man. His legacy is so well laid out, it is the third largest visitor attraction in the country. There is just so much to see and it is very well presented.
Elvis bought the house himself when he was 22 year old, for his mother for $200,000. That’s a lot of money for a young man just getting known, especially when he bought it. (Graceland was named by a previous owner.) It is still decorated in the colors and styles of the time that bring back lots of memories of what we all had then. Elvis loved Hawaii, so one room is very tropical with greens, carved wood, and souvenirs of his time there. The china in the dining room is Elvis and Priscilla’s wedding china. The media room, had 3 TV’s so he could watch all 3 major networks at the same time, plus there was a pull down full wall screen to watch movies. Every room seemed to have a bar in it. The tour guide explained that the culture was for cocktails as part of the entertaining. And there was
a piano in every room too.
Outside, there was a kidney shaped pool and an 8-car carport plus garage for all his motorcycles and equipment. He loved fast toys, even a tractor to do grounds work.
Elvis was a highly skilled karate expert, and loved any friendly competition. This is why he did his own stunts in movies. He loved racquetball so much he had his own racquetball court, complete with bar for the spectators and a piano to play if the game was boring. He had horses, not only for him and Pricilla and Lisa, but also for his staff. His favorite horse was a palomino - think Roy Rogers. They all enjoyed romping around the grounds and you could see him doing just that in the green grass pastures with white fences.
The gravesite area was very touching because it was so tastefully done. It sits at the end of the pool, a place Elvis really enjoyed so it is fitting to be next to it. Yes Lisa Marie is buried there, her son Benjamin, Elvis’ parents and a marker for Elvis’ twin who was stillborn. I couldn’t help but pray in this garden area
for such young lives taken. Elvis was only a performer for 19 years. Lesson— do what your dreams are because you have no idea how long you have to accomplish them.
Across the grounds from Graceland is Mainstreet Elvis, complete with several excellent museums and restaurants. One restaurant had to serve his famous peanut butter and banana sandwiches, and Natalie just had to have one, regardless of the fact I made them for years myself. Mainstreet is an interesting way to display Elvis without looking boring. Even the gift shops at each “business” were somewhat unique to that display.
One room displayed all his performance jumpsuits. Another was filled with his gold records.
The tribute room had comments by fellow musicians from every genre of music possible: he was loved by many and many gave him credit for their success. This is just too huge to explain. It would make a very worthwhile destination; even if you are not a huge Elvis fan, you will admire him afterwards. He was a humble man, loved performing, openly gave God credit for his success and was a man of his word. Elvis was here. Elvis lives.
Memphis Tennessee
is also home of the third largest Bass Pro Shop This store is truly a showplace. It’s a reflective pyramid building containing 3 floors and 150,000 square feet of outdoor sporting supplies and equipment, a small bowling alley, an arcade, an indoor pond with a variety of big live fish, a hotel, and three restaurants. The fish swam under the floor and bridges, metal birds flew high above. We never made it to the top because we were so tired. As we ate at one of the restaurants, the bowling alley was going strong, the arcade was busy, the shops were busy.
Our next stop was in Russellville, Arkansas at a delightful little park named Ivy’s Cove. We had a pleasant surprise when we met another Arctic Fox owner. They only stayed one night, but we had a very pleasant chat with fellow owners. We just don’t see many of these RVs outside of the Northwest, even though they really are very good and well made.
How many remember that tongue twister about Arkansas? Repeat aloud 3 times quickly: “In Arkansas I saw a saw that can out-saw any saw I saw in Arkansas.”
We also visited
the Russellville Locks and Dam on the Arkansas River and took a short drive through the huge park along the river next to the dam. There was a visitor center, but it was closed on Sunday, so we didn’t get to enjoy much they might have had to display.
We concluded the day at a very nice restaurant in town called Fat Daddy’s BBQ – “They put meat on your buns.”. We have no clue about Daddy’s size, but the food was really good. We are getting some very good and enjoyable experience with BBQ as we travel across the southern USA.
After Russellville, we returned to McAlester and spent another week with our friends there. We stayed at the same RV park as we did on the eastbound leg. However, the site we were given this time was much closer to the stockyards, and the stockyards were much busier this time around. The symphony of bawling cattle was much more continuous this time, and combined with the musical trains running most of the night, the entertainment while at our RV was really something special. As you might guess, we’ll look a little more closely at other RV
parks next time we travel through eastern Oklahoma.
Our next stop: Oklahoma City for a grand reunion. We really did like our time there before, but that was 40 years ago. It will be a nice place to see again.
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Linda Rogers
non-member comment
Always Onward
I love the stories you tell of your journeys. This time I especially loved the Elvis information. I was just in highschool when he was getting famous, and I remember when he went into the service, and his comments when he returned. I always thought Elvis could have done so much more with his music if he'd had a different manager. Your pictures are also spectacular. I wish you well and think of you daily as you take this trip and endeavor of a lifetime. God bless and keep you.