After the night of shooting in Tennessee (that will grab your attention if you have not been following..!) we had another noisy night – this time because the site in West Memphis was beside a drag car circuit.  You could not see it – but you could hear it.  Sometimes the sites are a bit hit and miss – but mostly when we come into civilization for laundry and Wi-Fi. No doubt we will get better at spotting the duds. 

No matter about it – we headed off on Sunday back over the bridge into Memphis proper and up to the Meeman-Shelby forest. In our book, it recommended that we should go to the Shelby Forest General Store.  Justin Timberlake is from Millington Memphis and he has featured this place in one of his videos .. so, we thought we would go there for Sunday brunch.

It was not at all what we expected – tiny and very humble.  The owner Miss Kristin as she was called, was so lovely and helped us with a map about what we could do and restaurants to try.  We had a great breakfast and they were just the loveliest people.  She even asked us about Brexit – which as you know is a bone of contention for the Bradbury’s!! Is it sorted yet?!

The forest had a camp ground and we ended up staying four nights as it was just so lovely.  Again, superb walks, cycling and another lake – but what was good was that it was about 25 minutes from the city and a really easy dual carriageway road in and out of town. Miss Kristin told us a back way to go and a really easy place to park Reg so we could alternate a day in the park, a day in the city.

Last Monday we got up and headed to Graceland.  It is tiny and in quite the most dreadful taste, so as expected – but what was so impressive were the rooms of his gold and platinum discs.  That was quite amazing to see.

Graceland has a shuttle bus that then takes you to Sun Studios and this was absolutely the highlight of the day for us both. We went into the studio where Elvis had made his first record – the marks are on the floor where the three guys stood.  To be in the room where all that music had been made was a goose bump moment and as we have said before the presentation of all this stuff is excellent.  We had a guide who played us all the records that led up to the birth of rock n roll and explained how all the characters in Memphis played their part.  It was very interactive and inspiring.

But nothing compared to Wednesday when we went back into the city and spent the whole afternoon in the National Civil Rights Museum which is located at the Lorraine Motel which is where Martin Luther King was shot on the balcony.  As it turns out you end up in the motel when the story gets there – but you have no idea as you are so immersed in it up to then!  My word it was probably the best museum we have ever been to. The stories starting with slavery up to the 1960’s were very cleverly told.  The right balance of fact, personality and interaction.  It was very moving in places and you felt a bit mixed up about that you had seen.  We headed straight to a bar when we had finished! 

Memphis was our favourite city to date.  We sampled the nightlife on Beale Street – where all the musicians still play seven nights a week – apparently until the early hours.  We did not last that long… There has been a major clean-up of the centre in terms of crime and restoration of old buildings.  We had lovely weather for wandering around and the people were very laid back and courteous.   If you ever get the chance to go – go!

As much as we liked staying in the forest – we needed to get going south again, so on Thursday morning we hit Mississippi and stayed in one of their state parks.  This had been made in the 1930’s when they had tried to improve the flood defences for the Mississippi river.  The river looks like butter would not melt in its mouth but in all towns along the river there are flood markers as to how high it has risen and they are mazing – like ten foot above normal.  The levees are all the way down but are not always sufficient.  Anyway, this manmade lake was very pleasant and was the base for us to explore Oxford the next day. Oxford is small town but the seat of the university of Mississippi or ‘Ole Miss’ as everyone calls it.  Lovely town – we had a spot of lunch and a coffee on a book store terrace overlooking the town square. Beautiful sunny day…

But then on the drive from Oxford to Clarksdale where we were staying the night – we drove into a terrible thunderstorm.  Slight drama in that the wipers on Reg would not come on until we turned the engine on and off again (does Reg know that Matt worked in IT?) and we arrived in Clarksdale to see some Juke Joint Blues in the worst rain and weather we have seen all trip.  We were quite near the crossroads where Robert Johnson meets the devil to get the blues, and it felt rather dramatic.

We could not wait any longer for the rain to subside so drudged to the Ground Zero Blues Bar which is owned by Morgan Freeman and another chap.  He was there to greet us and as it turns out he is mayor of Clarksdale.  The beers were nice, the burger too – but the night never got going in terms of atmosphere as I think the weather was so bad.  It turns out that people did die that night and 30,000 people lost power – so they probably weren’t appreciating that this was the one night both Alex and Matt could go out drinking without Reg!! 

We called in our way home to another blues club called Reds.  This again was fun – watching the crowd interact with the band and there was even some dancing… but we gave up about 1am pissed.

Yesterday we drove south to Vicksburg where I write from now.  This is a civil war hotspot.  More about this later. So far all we know is that we both got sunburnt today when walking downtown and we are in a RV park associated with a casino.  We have not been gambling .. but it was very Vegas.