Goin' to Graceland

Hi from somewhere, Mississippi. Maybe McComb? We started today in our shack in Clarksdale, which turns out to be HAUNTED. Haha. Lizzie was in the bathroom fixing her hair, and I heard her say something, and I said "What?" and she said "Didn't you just walk by and open the door and groan?" (In not so many words) and I looked dumbly at her, eyeliner in hand, because I'd been in the front room the whole time trying to jury rig a vanity out of travel guide books and my compact mirror. We figured it was the shack-ghost, who was trying to communicate something along the lines of "Why are you still here in this shack? OooOOoooo!" Spooky! So we decided to take his advice, and high tail it to Memphis to visit Elvis. (note, while we were checking out, the check out dude was joking around about how he wished he'd waited until his fifties to do all the cocaine he had done in his twenties)

It took about two hours to get up to Memphis, and honestly, Elvis Presley Blvd reminded me a little of the crappier parts of Route One in Saugus. We paid a million dollars for Graceland parking, and then paid another million for the "tour", which was self-guided with the help of headphones and a little modified walkman. I was pretty psyched to see Graceland, but to be honest it was pretty underwhelming, especially given the huge fee we had to pay to get in. The "mansion" itself is pretty small, and there is a boat-load of thick green shag carpeting, even on the walls. The jungle room looked like something your Aunt Mabel would have in her house--a room devoted to a bunch of weird crap she'd collected at yardsales that had a sort of unifying theme, like kitties, or angels, or jungle animals. The kitchen was small, though there was enough room to make fried banana and peanut butter sammiches. We saw the stables, the raquet ball court (houses jumpsuits now, not raquetball), and then the meditation garden, where Elvis and his folks are hanging out now. We were shuttled across the street where we looked at Elvis' airplane over a wall (we weren't paying another million dollars for that tour) and then took off to check out downtown Memphis, Beale street, Sun Records and all that good stuff. I wish we could've seen more Elvis impersonators, but I feel like Las Vegas is the place to do that. Anyway, Elvis is still pretty awesome, and I'm glad they don't let tourists see the bathroom.

So now for the sad news--Lizzie's had a death in her family, so she's flying out tomorrow from Gulfport, MS for the funeral. I'll be staying in Ol' Miss, mentally redecorating Graceland while I await her return on Thursday.