Thursday Memphis Trip

This day was an EPIC day.

The morning started awkwardly; my dad being as strange as ever, not driving us to the airport to pick up the rental car and strangely enough, leave his car at the long term parking at the airport. So let's just get a tally of where all our cars are:

1. Rental is at the airport.
2. Dad's car is in long term parking at aiport.
3. Monica's is in long term parking at Oakland aiport.

Just a lot of complications, especially when it comes to which trams' receipt and which parking lot ticket we have floating around in our wallets. In any case, the shuttle took us to the terminal, and the rental car shuttle took us down the road a bit to our new rental car. After a lot of fucking around with who can drive, etc. (turns out I could have driven the car legally if I had just said we were married... good old wholesome Midwest) and the odd taxes and securities that come from the airport, we were on the road in a bright orange Kia of some sort.

Our ride to Memphis was interesting and fun, with The Mixed Up Files playing throughout, and the landscape changing with each mile; we were heading south, and while it was flat for some time, we enjoyed the pretty easy drive down. We were getting pretty psyched to get to this pretty fantastic mecca of awesome music.

Aaand our first stop was Sun Studio! It's where Elvis, Cash, etc. recorded... and more recently, U2, and we stood in the exact same place, holding the exact same mic, making the oddest poses, that they did when they were recording! That was the highlight of the scene, but the whole Studio is a great museum with some pretty cool artifacts from that time period, including a recording of Elvis' first... uh... recording. (It sucked, by the way.)

THEN THEN, we went to the Stax Museum, which was even better than Sun Studio (sorry dude, you were a great guide, they just have a better museum); the whole tour through this musuem went through what the studio looked during that time period, and the history of soul in the area, to what celebrities lived like... ONE block away. It was pretty cool also, everyone interviewed about Stax, when it was a recording studio, said that there really was no racism in the building. Neat.

Next, Beale street, and walking around through that cool area, eventually ending up at Dyers, home of the 100 year old grease that fries those delicious burgers. Burger Journey continues. And throughout Beale street, music was wafting out of restaurants and through plazas... all amazing music. This really is still a Mecca for musicians.

One short ride to Tunica, ending at Harrah's, and the thoughts of Paula Deen's buffet the next morning danced in our heads as we most decidedly did NOT gamble, but instead fel fast asleep so quickly.