And That's That...

We had driven to the first rest stop past Chicago. Jasper was sleeping but I got to see a really cool fireworks display on our way through the city. We slept in the van at the rest area, woke up and started driving again.

We had a really half assed breakfast at some diner in Wisconsin, hit a traffic jam in the last 5 miles before we got home and then... ahhhhh.... home.

From the Lincoln birth place in Kentuky to home, with stops for food, gas, and sleeping it was almost exactly 24 hours. For a total of 2035.4 miles (3275.7 km for the euro types).

 Fantastic trip really. Worth it on so many levels. Good times... good times....

Thanks for reading.

Caves and Zip Lines

This being our last day we wanted to do something to remember. We had planned to go to a zip line / horse back riding / go-kart place, but it turned out that I had misread the pricing and when I double checked in the morning it just looked prohibitively expensive. So when we were eating our complementary "hot breakfast" (read bagels and freezer waffles) at the motel in Cave City I found a coupon for another cave tour, zip line and rappelling spot up the road. So we packed up swim suits, filled the cooler with ice and headed out to the Hidden River Cave. It was on the way and we had a coupon so there was no stopping us.

We got to the place, parked and bought our tickets. Turned out it was about 1/4 the price of the other place we had originally intended to go so that was a bonus. (There were no horses or go-karts and the zip line was much shorter than the other, but it had a cave).

The cave tour was interesting. This cave had been used for commercial purposes and then wound up being sealed up because it became a sewer. After the region got a modern sewage treatment plant the cave cleaned up quick and they started giving tours again.
Caves and digital cameras again
                                           

After the cave tour we did the zip line and the rappelling. They were short, but sweet. Actually I think it was good that they were short. I'm old and he's young after all. The rappelling was just a little scary.

 Ready

set













GO!!!

Even wound ended up with clean pants at the end... Jasper too.  :)

And that was that... We piled into the car for what we thought was the home stretch, but then we saw the sign for the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park, so we stopped there and had one last bit of a tour before we really pointed ourselves back to the house. We had taken a tour of the Minnesota Capital Building earlier in the year and as Abraham Lincoln was the president when Minnesota became a state, he played an important role in a lot of the displays there so this was a nice tie in. They also had a Junior Ranger program so Jasper did that while I napped in the movie room in preparation for the long haul back home.

This is the monument to the birth place. 56 steps, one for each year of his life. Jasper double checked. 

This is the 'original' log cabin that AL was born in. Actually the forest service knows that it's not really the cabin. It did tour the country and was purchased AS the cabin, but after further research they decided that it was most likely an amalgam. It's a period cabin, not a re-manufacture, just not THE cabin.

Good times.

So that was it. By the time we'd finished here we were DONE.
We hit the road and headed for home.

Mammoth Cave National Park

So after we left Nashville we drove until for a while and slept in a rest area over night. Pretty uncomfortable, but tolerable really. In the morning we got up and went to Cave City where we found a the Cream and Sugar Cafe and had omelets. The place was great. There were a bunch of old guys sitting around shooting the breeze and it was clear that they were probably there most every morning for coffee and toast, and the service was perfect. Friendly and quality. I was really glad that we found it.

After breakfast we headed out to the cave.

We checked out the Mammoth Cave National Park Visitor Center while we waited for our tour to begin and got a bit about the geology of the area and then we took the historic tour of the cave. The historic tour went through the original entrance to the cave and through the old salt peter mines that were used to win the war of 1812. It was a dry part of the cave so there weren't any spectacular formations to speak of like stalactites or cave bacon but it was a really cool tour none the less.

Digital cameras and caves... 

So after that we decided we'd spend the night in Cave City and go to a go-kart/horse riding/zip line place the next day so we got a room, had dinner and then Jasper pretty much stayed in the pool until it closed. I'm wondering if he's going to develop gills any time soon.

One Day in Nashville

We made it to Nashville at about 10 in the morning and after driving past our exit several times finally made it to Third Man Records. This was one of the main reasons for us in going to Nashville. We loitered around for a while and then recorded our song in the carve your own record booth.

 I don't have the recording digitized so it can hang out on the blog, but if I make it happen, I'll link to it here.


We really didn't have any other plans for Nashville so we found the Science Museum there and Jasper had a blast...


..playing with the Green Screen...

 ...examining patients...

...playing in 'Zero Gravity'...

and general archeology.












 Then we walked up and down Broadway a bit and listened to some of the music coming out of the bars there. There was a country band through every door. It was really great.

When it started getting dark on Broadway we decided it was getting a bit adult so we decided to split. On the way out of town we remembered that Nashville is "The Athens of the South" so we made a stop at the Parthenon our way out of town.

After this we hit the road on our way to Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky,

More Memphis and Central BBQ

Since we didn't make it to Sun studios or STAX and the BBQ at Central was so fantastic we decided to stay another day in Memphis and see what we could get in.


First we tried to get a picture in front of the Graceland gates. We walked over there and found them open. Someone walking up there told us that we could walk up to the grave site for free before the rest of the house opened up for tours so we walked up and sat for a bit.

After a quick swim, a shower and getting all packed up we headed out to the STAX Museum of American Soul Music. This place was really cool. Behind the museum there's a music centric charter school and there's a more advanced music academy right next door. All associated.

We spent a really long time in the STAX museum checking out the exhibits and listening to the music at the many listening stations. We considered going by Booker T's old house which was right in the neighborhood, but though better of it for want of BBQ.

Jasper took a lot of the pictures at STAX.

 Lots of 'selfies'

 Rufus Thomas "The Funkiest Man Alive"

 Isac Hayes Cadillac. 4 inch white shag carpet... WOW!

The little 6 inch gripper tripod came in really handy on this trip.

Jasper had a good time playing dress up with almost all of the 'soul' costumes at the end of the tour.


 Then it was back to Central BBQ for those fantastic ribs. I liked them so much I even bought the t-shirt.

After eating we decided it was too late to try and make it to SUN so we left Memphis in the rear view and drove to Jackson TN where we stopped on our way to Nashville, got a motel room and of course spent some time in the swimming pool.

Walking in Memphis

Took it easy this morning getting going. Spent a bunch of time in the swimming pool, because the boy loves to swim. He also likes to collect those smashed penny things. I of course almost never have change in my pockets now in this world of credit and debit cards so when I saw a penny lodged in the dirt near the camp site I dug it out, cleaned it up and brought it back over to the penny crusher outside of the Graceland gift shop. After the nice relaxing morning and the cheep souvenir :), we headed downtown to see what all the fuss about Beale Street was.

 First thing we had to do was stop in for a bowl of local gumbo because gumbo. The place was a night spot with a cool looking stage so we got a cool picture on the stage.









There were a bunch of gold records on the wall so when we spotted this one we had to snap a picture because we'd found the third king. Mr. BB King that is.

Jasper like Mr. Charles quite a bit so we got one of his favorites in there too.

Then we hit the street. We walked a bit, listened to the band that was playing in the WC Handy square and took a couple of pictures of the golden notes we liked. We got Elvis and the Blues Brothers, but there were plenty of others.

Then it was off to the Gibson Guitar Factory tour (no pictures are allowed there) which was kind of meh and we both agreed that we could have skipped that one. So we hit the Memphis Rock n Soul Museum which was really cool. 

 This museum gave a really broad detailed history of the music world associated with Memphis area. The Robert Johnson picture wasn't the first stuff, just the first picture we took. They started the history with sharecroppers listening to the Opry and playing on their front porches when their work was done.

 It was a self guided tour so we listened to all of the exhibits and snapped a couple of pictures. There is the piano Ike Turner learned to play on, a STAX exhibit with Isac Hayes and Booker T and the MG's and Sam the Sham's stage outfit. It was both Woolly and Bully. Jasper was especially impressed with the Sam and Dave music. He recognized it from the Blues Brothers movie (Soul Man) and the story about how 'Hold on, I'm comin' was conceived was interesting. Apparently one of them was using the rest room while they were trying to get some production done and the other was impatient so he shouted "Hold on, I'm coming" and the rest, as they say, is history.

Next, it was off to get some dinner. I asked at the Rock and Soul Museum and then also asked one of the horse carriage drivers where to get real BBQ and they both told me to go to the same place so we made the 6 block walk to Central BBQ and we were not disappointed at all. In fact it turned out to be the best food we had on the whole trip. Next time I'm in Memphis I will definitely stop in there again. Great BBQ and really friendly staff.

On the way back to the car we walked past WLOK Radio, which we had learned about at the Rock n Soul Museum. These Historic Site plaques are all over down there so we got a picture of that one. WLOK was a power house radio station in the area and was one of, if not THE first station with African American DJ's and Engineers and it became the first African American owned station in Memphis in 1977. It's still in operation, and you can check out their history page if you want to know more.

Where Elvis Lives

The camera malfunction that blew up all of our Scott Joplin pictures also claimed the Graceland pictures so there's just the one picture of a jump suit from the Hawaii concert. We went back later and took a picture in front of the gates. Graceland was really neat. After we found a way to look past all the shag carpeting and other kitch it's easy to get a real picture of how much the music and the fan's really meant to EP.

We checked out the car collection, Elvis' airplanes (the Lisa Marie and the Hound dog), the Tupelo exhibit (birth place of Elvis) and the Hawaii concert exhibit. Jasper's favorite was the air planes.

 All of that and only the one picture, but what a great day.

After all day at Graceland we jumped in the pool for a cool off and then took the big pink limo over to Marlowes for some pretty darn good BBQ. The pink limo was a hit as was the big pig air stream out front.