Blogzilla disgorges mind-numbing details of Pasley summer travels on unsuspecting readers in a single post

First of all, spoiler alert, the Pasley 2017 Summer Trip is over. We are safely back home in Texas and hunkered down in Casa College Park.
But man oh man were we busy between the last blog post on August 12 (recapping our stay in Asheville, NC) until we arrived home on Sunday, Sept. 24.
So brace yourself for the MOAB (Mother Of All Blog) posts and proceed at your own risk.
Betsy will start it off with a detailed account of the wedding week and our subsequent dash into the “totality zone” of the solar eclipse. Then I will try to "concisely" wrap up the final five weeks.
We know this is a lot, but it also feels like we left a lot on the cutting room floor.

Wedding week

 

(By Betsy)

My editor has asked me to attempt to capture the essence of Wedding Week.

Pre-wedding

 

The week started on Sunday afternoon, Aug. 13 when we arrived in Lexington, Kentucky to meet Tex, Rachel and her parents at a Legends minor-league baseball game. While the stadium was louder than most, it was a beautiful day and Tex did retrieve a foul ball, which we acknowledged as a good omen for the week ahead.
  

Success! We caught the Legend mascot on the way into the park.

Foul ball; a good omen for the week to come?

On Monday we joined the family at Old Friends retirement farm, the setting for the upcoming wedding. Why a horse farm? Rachel's parents are both accomplished, award-winning "turf writers" who cover the racing industry, and they have supported and embraced the concept of this unique farm as a place for retired thoroughbreds to live out their days.

One of the "residents" at the "retirement home". Why the long face?

On our visit this day, the barn didn't seem quite ready for its prime-time debut in five days. Mark (Rachel's dad) kept us all calm with his confidence in the owners. We then shared dinner in an adorable small town called Midway before Mark set off for the Cincinnati airport to pick up Nora, Rachel's older sister and the maid of honor. 

We attended to other chores and family activities the rest of the week, and Dave shuttled the trailer to Knoxville on Thursday to accommodate our viewing the eclipse the following week (more on that later).

Friday morning Dave and I joined the wedding party in their respective guy/girl brunch events. Dave and Mark accompanied (chaperoned?) the groomsmen at a distillery, and Rachel's mom Mary and I joined the bridesmaids at a "cook-your-own-brunch" celebration at a cool place called Wild Thyme. While we were flattered to be invited, I remarked to Dave that we wouldn't have dreamed of including our parents in our festivities almost 40 years ago. We were also only 22 back then.

The groomsmen - and Dads.

Friday night we traveled back to the farm for the rehearsal, and the barn looked much better. I had forgotten how many details are involved in an event like this, and it was obvious the hiring of a wedding planner was a stroke of genius by the Simons. The farm's mascot Little Silver Charm didn't rehearse his ring-bearer duties, but we were assured by his handler that he would "deliver" the next day. 

Dave and I hosted the rehearsal dinner afterwards at Lexington's West 6th Brewery downtown location. The couple endured several toasts, and I ran a seven-minute slideshow of Tex and Rachel growing up. The soundtrack of Jackson Brown's 80s tune "Lawyers in Love" seemed appropriate for the show, since these two graduated in the same UVA law class in May. I've been contemplating this idea since the engagement. I got Rachel's pictures from Mary, and spent many summer hours in the trailer pulling it together. It was fun matching up the adorable childhood pics (and learning about pan and zoom.) The kids seemed to be surprised, and I think it went over well.

Ready to check the beer temperature in preparation for the Rehearsal dinner.

Wedding day! 

Saturday morning we hosted a 50th anniversary brunch for Chet and Sue, Dave's brother and sister-in-law, who were celebrating their nuptials that same day. Their two sons and two grandkids attended, in addition to the rest of my and Dave's family who were in town. It was really great to catch up and spend some quality time with siblings and cousins on this busy weekend.

The grandkids watch Chet and Sue open 50th-anniversary gifts.

That night - of course - was the wedding. We thought we'd show up at 5 or so for pictures but Tex wanted us there a little earlier. There wasn't much for us to do so we visited with the groomsmen (most of whom we knew from Tex's college days at St. John's College) and relaxed and enjoyed the relatively cool weather (for August). 

Then things picked up, as the photographer took early pictures of the wedding party, and the bride and groom signed the Ketubah. I loved Rabbi Adland, who has known Rachel most of her life and traveled from his current home in Ohio to officiate at the ceremony. 

The Ketubah ceremony. These law school grads know all about contracts.

Now, please humor me with my thoughts about the ceremony.

In the dozens of weddings I've attended (including my own 39 1/2 years ago), I've became familiar with typical Christian or Catholic ceremonies, but have only attended one Jewish wedding.

While all have their traditions, there were several this day that really impressed me, including; the ketubah, which is signed by the couple and two witnesses; the wedding canopy (chuppah), which represents the home the new family will be establishing; the wearing of a yarmulke by the groom; a ring owned by the groom (in this case, his paternal grandmother Wava's ring) given to the bride; the breaking of a glass, and; the hora (chair dance). If you want to know more about the chair dance, check out this video.

It was an intimate, joyful, casual and incredibly meaningful ceremony - and one I will never forget.

Since we stood on the side of the groom, I had a front-row view of Rachel's expressive face. The most touching were her reactions as the Rabbi read Tex's letter to Rachel (he next read a similar letter from Rachel to Tex). Since it was the first time she heard these personal words of love and commitment, the feelings were raw and emotional. 

Both letters were fabulous, and were apparently written in the short time between their bar exams in late July and the wedding. Later Tex told me it's the hardest thing he's ever written.
 

This is Tex's serious face.

We were "holding up" the corners of the chuppah. What an honor.

Loving letters and laughter. What a ceremony.

It's official!

Finally, a ring bearer my size! I couldn't help it.

In retrospect, what most impressed me about this event planned by two 28-year-old "kids" was the focus they put into honoring family. 

For example, as mentioned before, it was a pleasant surprise to be included in the Friday wedding party brunches. Also, I was pleased with Rachel and Tex's idea of displaying wedding pictures of the parents and grandparents at the reception.

Honoring the parents and grandparents.

The most meaningful moment for me was the opportunity to stand with the couple at the ceremony. In the Jewish tradition, we were positioned at the corner of the chuppah across from Rachel's parents, while the bridesmaids and groomsmen sat in the first row. Had this been a Presbyterian wedding (as we had) the wedding party would have taken the privileged position by the altar and we would have been relegated to second-class status in the pews. 

Also, before the wedding, all parents received letters from the bride and groom, and we were incredibly touched. It didn't hurt that both these future lawyers are very talented writers.

 
After the ceremony, we took family pictures, and then moved to the newly renovated barn for dinner. It got a little stuffy but we dealt with the warmth, enjoying entertaining toasts from parents, the maid of honor and the best man. 

Dave recalled the family who couldn't be there.

No words.

Next were the special father/daughter and mother/son dances. Mark and Rachel danced to "Moon River," which was a favorite of Mary's father. For my dance with Tex, I chose Fleetwood Mac's sentimental "Landslide," which includes the line: "Children get older, and I'm getting older too." That's the way it's supposed to work. 

This was a special moment for me.

More dancing, including the couples dance and hora, followed.

 

I couldn't believe it, but after getting back to the hotel at 11, we still had the energy to join most of the wedding party at the hotel bar, and we stayed until the 1 a.m. closing time. Almost everyone was there, including the bride and groom, the wedding party, all four parents -- and Rachels's 89-year-old grandmother Mae!

 

The aftermath

 

Sunday the Simons hosted a brunch at their house for more than 60 people, and it was a hit. Rachel and Tex's classmates from St Johns's College, Carleton College, and Appalachian State University broke into their own groups. It was fun watching them catching up. I remembered how much I appreciated our classmates' weddings after graduation so we could have our own reunions in our 20s. 

Dave went with Chet and nephews Brian and David to a distillery while I hung out with the Simons, joined them at an arts fair, and then walked back to the hotel. Later, we met Rachel's family for a beer and then Dave's family for dinner. Tex and Rachel stayed in town and - in a very thoughtful gesture - came by both groups to say goodbye. 

Tex is an amazing, loving, thoughtful man, and he has found a beautiful, intelligent, passionate life partner from a great family in Rachel. We are so pleased.

Now - to the eclipse!

Traveling to totality: an eclipse story

(Also by Betsy)

This is what we saw, but we can't take credit for the picture.

I've always loved astronomy. The mystery and magnificence of the stars and planets has appealed to me since I was a kid. Even though my career dreams were dashed in college - when I realized professional astronomers had to be good at chemistry - I'm still a big fan.

So when I noticed articles about the Aug. 21 total eclipse dominating my social media and news feeds, I decided to look more closely. The date was problematic; it was on Monday, Aug. 21, just two days after the wedding in Kentucky.

But my interest peaked when I realized that the path of totality would pass just a few hours south of Lexington, our wedding location. While Lexington was close, it was still only 98%. If we were that close, I thought, why wouldn't we try to get to 100% totality? It would be our first full eclipse ever. 

I delicately broached the subject to Dave as we were driving our travel trailer to Kentucky. His first reaction wasn't too enthusiastic. Since the Sunday before the eclipse was a day of post-wedding family activities, the idea of leaving a day ahead wasn't on the table. And it conflicted with our original plan to drop our trailer off in Knoxville (right on the edge of the path) that Monday. Since these trailer moves take a lot of time and effort, the thought of getting up at the crack of dawn, going through our hook-up procedures, driving several hours and looking for an eclipse-watching spot with our 30-foot trailer attached didn't make sense. 

After pontificating for a few days, Dave made a proposal, and his plan is what made it happen. He volunteered to spend Thursday pulling the trailer to storage in Knoxville three hours away and then returning to our hotel room to prepare for pre-wedding festivities. That freed up Eclipse Monday for an easier drive and chance to stake out a viewing spot. After that we would proceed east as planned to visit D.C. and Philadelphia.

I was prepared. Using online NASA graphics, I used a highlighter to transpose the path of totality onto a Tennessee road map and researched potential stops off the highways. 

My low-tech Tennessee map shows the path of totality between the solid lines. The center where the eclipse would last more than two minutes is highlighted.  The red circles were the potential rest area locations, but the black box is where we ended up.

After a fantastic wedding weekend, we left the hotel early Monday thinking we could stop at a rest area off of Interstate 75. As I suspected, the rest areas had been closed in anticipation of the traffic (which was pretty busy.) So we consulted the map and headed west off the highway toward a small town called Decatur, which was almost in the middle of the path. It also happened to be on the way to Dayton, a town we had considered visiting someday because of its significance as the location of the famous Scopes "Monkey" Trial.

As the 1 p.m. starting time approached, we entered Decatur and pulled up to the humble Meigs County Courthouse. We saw a small group on the lawn, many of them wearing matching eclipse t-shirts. After unpacking our chairs, lunches and special glasses, we settled in and met the neighbors. Dave made friends with the gregarious county mayor and I chatted up Jack and Judy, an older couple from the Florida panhandle who told me that up until now they were 0-for-4 on eclipses.
   

The Miegs County (TN) courthouse above. The County Mayor and Dave below.

We hit the jackpot. The sky remained clear as we donned our glasses to watch the moon's silhouette slowly work its way across the sun. As we approached totality, the day took on a pink glow and then - suddenly - it was like nighttime. For more than 2 1/2 minutes we were able to look directly at this cosmic phenomenon with the naked eye. We took pictures of our surroundings, including the streets now illuminated by automated lighting. While it wasn't pitch dark, it was definitely dim and surreal, and everyone around us was in a similar state of awe.

A normal Decatur downtown daytime scene.

The same street minutes later during totality.

This panoramic photo of the Miegs County Courthouse in Decatur was taken at 2:25 p.m. on August 21. The photo below was taken from the same location at 2:33 p.m.

One way to describe the sensation of totality might be to say that it was like a clear night with a full moon just before sunrise. The sky overhead was dark but it was not pitch dark because there was sunlight visible on the horizon; similar in some respects to the eastern sky just before dawn but much different because the sunlight was visible on the horizon in every direction, not just in the eastern sky. It was both very weird, and very cool.

Our fellow eclipse-watchers in Decatur, TN. We tried to get everyone to wear their glasses, but obviously failed. We also tried to score a couple of those cool t-shirts from the County Mayor, but they were all gone by the time we got there.

After some group pictures with our new friends and a personal tour of the courthouse led by the mayor, we headed to Dayton for a brief history stop.

History in Dayton, TN. Not sure we've made much progress.

A statue of Scopes prosecutor William Jennings Bryan was erected on the lawn of the Rhea County Courthouse in Dayton in 2005, on the 75th anniversary of the founding of the local evangelical Bryan College. However, the addition this July of a statue of Scopes defender Clarence Darrow has caused a bit of controversy. You can read more about that here.

It occurred to us later that 99% viewing was completely different from totality, and even Dave agreed that this was indeed a unique* experience and a pretty cool way to end such an amazing wedding week.

*I'd say "once-in-a-lifetime" but soon after this event we read about an eclipse coming in April of 2024 and discovered that our house in northwest San Antonio will be within the totality zone of this eclipse (see graphic below). I wonder how much we can charge for our guest room?

Mr. and Mrs. Pasley Go To Washington

(The remainder of the post by Dave) 
When the eclipse was over we joined with tens of thousands of fellow “eclipse tourists” heading northeast into Virginia and the mid-Atlantic states. Interstates 75, 40 and 81 were jam packed with vehicles leaving the totality zone – literally a parking lot in many sections – and that went on for at least the next two days. We were very fortunate to get a room in Kodak, Tennessee (east of Knoxville) the first night. The next day we abandoned I-81 and ground our way through the twists and turns of hilly southwest Virginia, via Appomattox Courthouse, and on to Fredericksburg, Virginia, which is south of Washington D.C.

On his 1791 Southern Tour Washington stopped in at Mount Vernon both on his way south and on his way back north to Philadelphia. Being so close, we were compelled to stop and pay our respects.

After the stop at Mt. Vernon we drove to Dulles International Airport, parked the truck in a long-term lot and shuttled to the airport, where we caught a different shuttle to a Washington Metro stop in Reston (note: the Metro line is being extended to Dulles but has not made it there yet). With all of our personal items in our small backpacks we took the Metro to a fabulous Homewood Suites in the Navy Yard section of D.C., literally steps from the entrance to the Navy Yard Metro stop and one block from the entrance to Nationals Park (home to the Washington Nationals baseball team).

This is the view looking south from the rooftop patio of our hotel toward Nationals Stadium.

And this is the view looking north with the Washington Monument and the Capitol Dome in the distance.

We spent eight nights there, attended five Nationals games (so many in fact that we learned the chants, check it out) and visited (via rental bike, Metro and on foot) nearly 50 monuments, museums and historic sites; ranging from the famous (National Museum of African American History on the anniversary of the MLK “I have a dream” speech) to the lesser known (Belmont-Paul Women's Equality National Monument on the anniversary of the certification of the 19th amendment) to the obscure (the Francis Scott Key Memorial at 34th and M St.; Key owned a Georgetown house nearby).

It was a fantastic eight days that seemed to fly by. We loved D.C.

This is the view John Wilkes Booth had on the night of April 14, 1865 when Abraham Lincoln sat in a chair similar to this and looked over that balcony rail and down to the stage at Ford's Theater. If you look closely you can see the reflection of Betsy's Washington Nationals hat (with the running W) in the protective glass that partitions this section of the theater balcony from public access.

The Washington Monument is closed for repairs and is not expected to re-open until 2019, but I really like this photo.

Get your steely hands out of my crotch, you pervert! Actually, looks can be deceiving. This sculpture stands outside of one of our most interesting D.C. stops, the President Lincoln and Soldiers’ Home National Monument. Lincoln spent about 25 percent of his nights as president at this spacious cottage in what was then a rural area of the District, in part to escape the summer heat and the danger of contracting cholera. He often "commuted" back and forth from the cottage to the White House on horseback. He wrote the Emancipation Proclamation in this house.

54 years later, we're still dreaming.

This is a cool display at the visitor center at Ford's Theater NHS (across the street from the theater itself). It is a stack of the more than 15,000 discrete books that have been written about Abraham Lincoln.

This is an attempt at listing the many places we visited and things we saw during our stay in D.C.

• ·       Ford’s Theater National Historic Site (and Peterson house across the street, where Lincoln died)
  ·       U.S. Navy Memorial
  ·       Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery
  ·       Carter G. Woodson Home National Historic Site (Father of African-American history)
  ·       Belmont-Paul Women's Equality National Monument (on anniversary of certification of 19th amendment)
  ·       African-American Civil War Memorial
  ·       Frederick Douglass National Historic Site
  ·       Anacostia Park
  ·       U.S Supreme Court Building (attended lecture in courtroom)
  ·       U.S. Capitol (took the "art" tour)
  ·       U.S. Grant Memorial (dedicated 1922 as a "bookend" to the Lincoln Memorial on the opposite end of the Mall)
  ·       National Museum of American History (including Washington sword from his resignation of his commission at Annapolis, and two chairs and one of the two tables that Grant and Lee used at the Appomattox surrender)
  ·       National Museum of African American History (on anniversary of MLK's "I have a dream" speech)
  ·       Fort Totten Park (part of Civil War Defenses of Washington)
  ·       President Lincoln and Soldiers’ Home National Monument (Armed Forces Retirement Home managed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation).
  ·       National Archives (including originals of Declaration of Independence, all four of the very large pages of the Constitution and the "Bill of Rights")
  ·       Woodrow Wilson House
  ·       Anderson House (current HQ of GW-founded Society of Cincinnati)
  ·       Navy-Merchant Marine Memorial
  ·       LBJ Memorial Grove on the Potomac
  ·       Theodore Roosevelt Island (a memorial to TR)
  ·       Arlington National Cemetery (where we visited the graves of sister-in-law Sue's parents and the nearby 9-11Memorial)
  ·       Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park
  ·       Rock Creek Park: Francis Scott Key Memorial (at 34th and M St. in Georgetown where Key owned a house nearby)
  
  

  ·   Old Stone House, the oldest structure on its original foundation in D.C. Built in 1765 in what was then the British colony of Maryland.
  ·       Korean War Veterans Memorial
  ·       George Mason Memorial (author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights)
  
  ·       District of Columbia War Memorial (to 26K DC residents that served in WWI)
  ·       Lincoln Memorial
  ·       Vietnam Veterans Memorial
  ·       Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial
  ·       World War II Memorial
  ·       Thomas Jefferson Memorial
  ·       Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial
  ·       56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence Memorial in Constitution Gardens
  ·       National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden

Philadelphia

From D.C. we took Amtrak to Philadelphia where we stayed four nights in a small AirBnB apartment three blocks from Independence Hall. 

Similar to D.C., Philly was non-stop, dusk-to-dawn sightseeing at nearly two dozen sites; including an after-hours, evening visit to Independence Hall where actors played the roles of Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and John Dunlap (the guy who printed the original copies of the Declaration). That event included a supper at the historic City Tavern. 

On another day we found our way to Jim’s Steaks on South Street for a delicious Philly Cheese Steak Sandwich. The just-this-year-opened Museum of the American Revolution was a major reason we decided to go to Philadelphia this summer and it was fabulous; just one short block from our BnB apartment.

Betsy made a lot of interesting friends in Philadelphia. For instance, here she is discussing font sizes with a local printer.

 

And here she is helping Betsy Ross raise the flag in front of Ross's house. Check out this video of the event!

Finally, here she is mugging for the camera behind the back of her buddy GW, once again wearing her Southern Tour t-shirt. Girl, did you ever take that shirt off?

If you do happen to find yourself at Jim's Steaks on South Street, don't get too cute. Get it with Cheeze Whiz. You will not regret it.

One night in Philly we joined a small group gathered in Independence Hall to watch Tommy J and Ben and Johnny A (not pictured) debate some of the proposed edits to Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration of Independence. The "Once Upon a Time in History" actors really brought these events to life.

Here's a stab at listing the various sites we visited and things we saw in Philadelphia.

• ·       Edgar Allen Poe National Historic Site (one of 5 houses he lived in in Philadelphia). Poe was there just one year with a wife who had just contracted TB and a mother-in-law named "Muddy." Department store mogul Gimball was a Poe fan and bought the house for a museum
  
  ·       Gloria Dei (Old Swedes’) Church National Historic Site (built between 1698 and 1700) is the oldest church in Pennsylvania.
  ·       Benjamin Franklin Museum and Franklin Court (includes the house location, print shop, etc.)
  ·       Franklin's grave at Christ Church burial ground
  ·       President's House site (where #1 lived when he was Prez)
  ·       Washington Square Park and Tomb of the Unknown Revolutionary War soldier
  ·       Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial (a Polish military engineer and volunteer in the American Revolution, K played a significant role at Saratoga and West Point. After the Revolutionary War, Kosciuszko became a hero in his own country by leading an unsuccessful uprising against Russian forces. He returned to Philadelphia in 1797, entertaining many visitors in this house, including Thomas Jefferson).
  ·       Signer’s Garden with "The Signer" statue
  ·       Jim's Steaks on South Street
  ·       Supper at City Tavern and reenactment of July 4 events at Independence Hall
  ·       Museum of the American Revolution (opened in April)
  ·       Second Bank of the U.S. and portrait gallery (with Charles Peale portrait exhibit)
  ·       The Magnolia Garden
  ·       Carpenters’ Hall
  ·       Signers’ Walk (a tribute to the declaration signers)
  ·       Old City Hall (site of the first Supreme Court)
  ·       Congress Hall (where Congress met from 1790 to 1800 while new Federal District was being developed)
  ·       National Constitution Center
  ·       Betsy Ross House (where Betsy helped Betsy raise the flag)
  ·       Liberty Bell (Dave)
  ·       Declaration House (reconstructed house on the original site of the house where Jefferson drafted the declaration)
  ·       The Great Essentials Exhibit in the west wing of Independence Hall (displays surviving copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution of the United States, along with the silver inkstand that, according to tradition, was used during the signing of the Declaration and Constitution).

Return to Knoxville

Waking up in Philly we retraced our steps via Uber, Amtrak, Metro and two shuttles to retrieve the truck from the long-term parking lot at Dulles and made it as far as Charlottesville in rainy weather before stopping for the night.

During the next three days we made it back to Knoxville, got the trailer out of storage and took a great tour of the Oak Ridge Reservation where the first atomic bomb was built.

On Friday evening and Saturday we hung out with the newlyweds, including a stop at the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.

Dave engaged in a very weird bonding experience with Ginny, Rachel and Tex's cat; but it wasn't as bad as it looks.

Nashville

The entrance to the TN State Fair set the perfect tone for its rapid descent to a #14 (out of 15) ranking on our list of "State Fairs Attended".

We like Nashville, and have spent several days there in years past in the hip downtown area. But among our many stops this summer our 2017 Nashville experience will probably rank at or near the bottom. It may be that the remnants of Hurricane Irma put a bit of a damper on our three-night stay. We visited the Stones River National Battlefield, Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage and the Tennessee State Fair. This was our 15^th state fair and it earned a solid #14 ranking. Basically, it sucked and the fact that it does not rank dead last should give you an idea of the awfulness of #15, the Georgia State Fair. On a more positive note, Jackson's Hermitage plantation is owned and operated by a non-profit foundation and they are, IMO, doing a superb job of presenting a fair and balanced account of this important, patriotic, brutal, complex and controversial man. Stones River is a Civil War battle site and we are not very interested in Civil War battles. However, it is a beautiful place with a great visitor center and miles of wonderful trails.

Memphis

Elvis loved mirrors and they are all over Graceland, on the walls and ceilings, which made for some great photos. I took this one in a stairwell leading to the Graceland basement.

 

You can debate whether or not Elvis is really dead, but one thing is for sure; he is still earning a bundle of money for his estate.

Our expectations for our three-night stay in Memphis were very low but they were greatly exceeded. We had a fantastic time in Memphis and the good times got started with my insistence that we stay at the Graceland RV Park, which is across the street (Elvis Presley Blvd.) from the mansion and a short walk across a parking lot from the visitor center and gift shops. We had read about a pink Cadillac that would come to the park to chauffeur diners to a nearby barbecue restaurant and we wondered if they also had take out, which they did. So we plugged in an on-line order for a couple of plates of pork ribs and about 10 minutes later a guy driving a pink Cadillac was knocking on the trailer door with some very tasty ribs. It was so good we did the same thing the next night! I don't know how you can get any more Elvis, or any more Memphis, than that.

We took the basic Graceland tour ($35 apiece for seniors) and really enjoyed it. 

They use tablets with video and panoramic still photos that you can control at your own pace as you walk through the house and it was very well done. I was expecting something completely over the top but the house is not really that extravagant (assuming you like carpet on the ceiling). Elvis bought the house from a physician and it is basically just a large, ranch-style house that he embellished with some 70s-era excesses. The property itself is really nothing grander than an oversized suburban acreage lot that has since been enveloped by the expanding city. Compared to what he probably could have afforded, it seems to me to be quite modest.

 

I wonder if the maid charges extra to vacuum the ceilings?

Another mascot! We did not see this one coming.

In a summer chock full of serendipity, we got another one in Memphis when Betsy noticed that the AAA baseball team, the Memphis Redbirds, had a playoff game against the El Paso Chihuahuas starting at noon in the Redbirds downtown stadium across the street from the Peabody Hotel.

So we went to the hotel, watched the famous ducks (click here for video) do their walk from the elevator to the fountain in the lobby, and then walked across the street for a great game. The teams were playing a best-of-five series to determine the champion of the Pacific Coast League and it was a masterful display of good pitching. The game was still scoreless with two outs in the bottom of the 11^th inning when the Memphis right fielder, Jose Garcia, jacked one over the left field wall. The entire 11-inning game was finished in less than three hours on a beautiful, sunny day.

After the game we stopped at the Cotton Museum at the Memphis Cotton Exchange. As a young woman fresh out of business school my Mom worked at the Cotton Carnival in Memphis, an event sponsored by the Exchange. They didn’t have much about the Carnival at the museum but it was well-done and interesting, and fun to learn about an important part of Memphis history.

Speaking of Memphis history, we also went to the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, the place where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. It is an excellent museum that traces the ongoing struggle for civil rights and preserves and freezes in time the familiar motel balcony where King was standing when he was shot, the motel room where he was staying, and the boarding house across the street where James Earl Ray fired the fatal shot.

MLK was staying in room 306 and standing on the balcony in front of that room when he was shot on April 4, 1968. The motel has been incorporated into the NCRM and you can look into the room, which is depicted as it would have looked in 1968, from inside the museum.

We went there on a Friday and the UCLA football team was in town for a game against the University of Memphis the next day. Many players and coaches were at the museum, moving through the exhibits at about the same time and pace as us. They were not as big as you would think they would be.

After the museum we grabbed some great fried chicken at Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken and headed over to B.B. King’s Blues Club on Beale Street for a raucous set of soul music played before an audience made up primarily of UCLA fans in town for the game (which Memphis won the next day in an upset, 48-45).

Little Rock

We found a fantastic RV park on the banks of the Arkansas River in North Little Rock with a beautiful view of the Little Rock skyline across the river. We spent two nights there and never unhitched the trailer from the truck. Instead we got our bikes out and rode across the river on the nearby pedestrian/bike bridge to a downtown brewery, the Clinton Library and Museum and the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site.

Little Rock Central High School, still standing and still operating.

The weather and the beer were good, the Clinton Library is beautiful and well done and the historic site is exceptional. I had been to both the library and the NPS site before but it was the first time for Betsy and the first time for me at the historic site since the new visitor center opened. We spent several hours there listening to accounts from the nine African-American students that integrated the school and some of the white teachers, administrators and students recalling the events that took place at the high school and in Little Rock in the late 1950s.

Hot Springs

Hot Springs is a strange town and an unusual national park but we enjoyed our two-day visit.

Hot Springs is one of the oldest national parks - the 18^th when it was designated in 1921 – and the attempts by the Federal government to preserve the springs date back to the Jackson Administration, 40 years before Yellowstone was protected. Hot Springs is also one of only 59 NPS sites that have been given the highest designation of "national park" and I have now been to 48 of those national parks and Betsy has been to 41 of them. Hot Springs NP was also Betsy’s 211^th NPS site visited and my 271^st.

The park service has done a great job of preserving and interpreting the row of elaborate bath houses that developed and flourished in the mountain valley that eventually evolved into the city where Bill Clinton grew up and graduated from high school. The heyday of the bath houses was the late 19^th and early 20th century when they were seen as a legitimate form of "modern" medicine and therapy. By the 1930s they were slowly slipping into disrepair as medical knowledge and practices improved.

One of the old bath houses is now leased to the Superior Bath House Brewery and, as readers might imagine, we couldn’t resist offering this fledgling business our enthusiastic support. More surprisingly perhaps, we also “took the waters” at the Buckstaff Bath House, an experience that included a 20-minute massage. Frankly, I found it a little weird to be walking around naked, sitting in bath tubs and standing in showers of hot water while a black guy about my age who has worked there for 40 years rubbed my legs and back with a loopha mitt.

We also took a ranger-led (fully clothed) tour of the Fordyce Bath House and did a little bit of hiking in the park where I climbed to the top of a mountaintop tower that affords excellent 360 degree views of the area.

Back in Texas

It felt really good to cross that state line! We spent our first night back in the Lone Star State at a really nice RV park outside of Longview where we had enjoyed the offerings of Bodacious Bar-B-Q, the number four-ranked barbecue joint in the state by Texas Monthly.

From there we drove south to Houston and took up residence for the last three nights of our trip at the same RV “resort” in Pearland where we had spent the first three nights of a trip that began on May 3.

Houston, still standing.

Houston, of course, had experienced “a bit of weather” since we were there in May. However, we did not see much evidence of flood damage from our vantage point. From our limited perspective, everything seemed pretty much the same. We made a return trip to Killen’s Barbecue in Pearland and took in a well-pitched, noon-start day game between the Astros and Angels.

It was our 23^rd baseball game of the trip and they break down as follows; seven Major League, four AAA, two AA, nine A (both high and low) and one College Wooden Bat Summer League.
Oh, by the way, the Astros crushed the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and the train rolled once again.

The drive west from Houston on I-10 to home was uneventful and, just like that, it was over; 144 nights on the road and 14,244 miles added to the truck that ran for 362 hours and consumed 991 gallons of gasoline.

Here’s a breakdown of the trip by nights spent in each state. 

NC	66
VA	23
TN	15
TX	9
DC	8
KY	8
SC	5
PA	4
AR	4
LA	1
AL	1