Sonya's Blog - Day 222 - We're Going to Memphis!

Sonya’s Blog - Day 222 - January 30th - We’re Going to Memphis, TN

We are on the road again, to reach our destination of Memphis, TN. It is unfortunate that we cannot explore Oak Mountain State Park some more, but that is the way it goes. The drive is going to take us between 4 and 5 hours today, so we need to get moving.

Kizmet ran out of the RV after Blake this morning and wouldn’t come back. She was tearing around in the trees chasing all the squirrels and generally being a bad girl. Now Kizmet was having a rip roaring time, so she thought all was well. Blake finally got her back and she felt shame, but rest assured, given the opportunity, she would do it all over again. Luckily, the campground is not very full, so it wasn’t a huge deal.

So bad, but having so much fun:

The drive was pretty uneventful, not too much in this part of Alabama. We crossed into Mississippi after a couple of hours. We stopped at the rest stop to give Kizmet a walk and use the facilities. It was the fanciest Welcome Centre we have ever been in. They had Southern Hospitality, with two rooms set up in Antebellum style, with some Elvis and pop culture thrown in. They welcomed us right away and offered us coffee. We got a few pictures:

We spent the rest of the drive in Mississippi, right up until the end. Memphis is right in the southwestern corner of Tennessee, near the borders of Arkansas (to the west) and Mississippi (to the south). Northern Mississippi is not very exciting either, as it turns out. Driving was easy though. We went through an area where a tornado had clearly done it’s damage. Huge trees were torn in half and a huge road sign was ripped apart and mangled up. Don’t really want to be around for one of those.

We are staying at the Graceland RV and Campground in Memphis. Graceland is just across the street and the campground is right behind the Heartbreak Hotel. We had no problem finding it, as it is on the Southern end of Memphis, just off of Elvis Presley Blvd. We were listening to Elvis Presley radio on Sirius XM for a lot of our drive, it is broadcast out of Graceland. As we were waiting for Blake to check us in the DJ was going on about how nice it is in Tennessee right now (it was 20 degrees when we pulled in - so really nice for January). Then he proceeds to say that things are getting worse and there is the chance of severe thunderstorms with tornadoes on Tuesday (the day we are supposed to leave). Whaaaatt!

I looked up the weather forecast and, sure enough, severe weather all the way through Mississippi (where we will need to drive on Tuesday) up to Tennessee and even south into Louisiana with possible tornadoes in all those areas (and other states too, but the heart is where we need to drive). We will need to keep an eye on that and possibly leave on Monday instead.

The campground is not the nicest, but it has all the services we need and it is where we need to be. We got all set up, walked Kizmet around and then did some work. Not long after we set up, the wind picked up and it wasn’t very nice to sit outside anymore - that was a bummer. I worked with Isaac on his school work and posted some blogs. Natasha disappeared to do her own thing and Blake printed off all the forms we need to fill out to register Natasha in High School next year.

We had supper and then walked over to check out the Heartbreak Hotel. It is not a huge hotel and doesn’t look like much from the outside. They had lots of Elvis stuff inside and an Elvis gift store. In the eating area, they had videos playing of Elvis in concert. We had a good look around and snapped some pictures:

When we got back we decided to watch a show. The wifi was decent so we could watch Netflix. We chose an SNL episode from 2010. We thought it was the best of 2010, but it turned out to be the first show of that season. Some of it was pretty funny.

After that, we called it a night.

Sonya