Monday, April 14, 2014

We did make it home on Saturday, April 5.  It was a long 6 hour drive, made worse for me by a sinus headache.  We'd like to find some place about 4 hours from home for our first and last nights of a trip.

Steve got the trailer backed into the driveway with little trouble.  He's actually getting pretty good at it.  Someday I'll get up the courage to back up the trailer.

But we've had to turn the furnace on to make sure the trailer doesn't freeze.  It's supposed to snow tonight.  Apparently we didn't stay in the south long enough!

Transitioning back home has been interesting.  I keep going back and forth to the trailer.  We need to work on how to efficiently transfer what we need from one to the other.  We bought the trailer mostly furnished with not only furniture, but plates, glasses, towels, sheets, etc.  Since everything was good quality, we just kept all of it.  Most of the linens are in browns and beiges.  Since Steve is red green color blind and red, green and brown all look alike to him and we don't use them in the house.  So, we know that anything in one of those colors belongs in the trailer.   That helps, as it will make it a bit harder to leave town without sheets or towels!

Steve has been making great progress on our desk for the trailer.  It had to be cut to fit, both lengthwise and widthwise and cutouts to go around the windows done.  That cutting is done and he has test fitted it.  It looks great and now "just" needs to have the edges routed, everything sanded, stained and sealed.  And the T portion of the desk needs done.  But progress has been made.

One of the things I didn't talk about earlier was all storm damage we saw across the south.  Along most of the highways we could see torn limbs and downed trees.  We finally managed to get a picture of some of the damage at the Tom Sawyer RV Park.

You could tell the recent damage from the lighter wood.  We saw this kind of damage everywhere but southern Florida.  It was a bad winter all over.

Now, it's time to get the house ready for Easter.  We're hosting this year, so we have to finish getting sorted out from last year's remodeling.  We had managed to get all of the furniture moved back into place before we left on our trip, but there are still things that need to be hung or put away or found.  (The wine bottle opener is missing; Leigh had to borrow one!)

Deb

Friday, April 4, 2014

We didn't have good Internet access the last two nights, so I gave up and went to bed.  I left off on Tuesday without mentioning the food.  One of the things we've always enjoyed as we traveled is finding local restaurants to try.  In the past we relied heavily on the AAA guides.  We still use those, but supplement with Urban Spoon and Around Me apps and Travelocity web site.

Using those, we found a restaurant around the corner from the Rock and Soul Museum with a 95% approval rating, known for great burgers.  So we wander over and walk in to Wet Willies and its just a bar.  No indication of food service, except that there is a family eating food.

This is obviously a late night place.  Behind the bar is a whole row of frozen daiquiri machines.  I start to suspect that the 95% rating may not be due to food.  We eventually realize that there are menus on the bar and go up and order.  I order a hamburger, no bun and fries and Steve gets a pulled pork sandwich.  We wait awhile for the food and conversation's not really an option because the bar's music is competing with the live music from the park across the street.  Finally the food comes.  And it is delicious.  I don't know that I've had a better burger.  Steve said his pork sandwich was great, too.

On Wednesday, we started at the Blues City Cafe on Beale Street for lunch.  Beale Street is the street for Music in Memphis.  I order ribs and Steve goes with pulled pork again.  This place was somewhat reminiscent of the Smokehouse in Lafayette.  Except better.  (And I like Smokehouse!)  I have no idea how they manage to place a half rack of ribs on my plate, because when I touch it, the meat falls off the bone.  Seriously tender and flavorful.  So good, in fact, we buy our first souvenir of our trip - a jar of their seasoning.

Next on the agenda was a stop at Schwab's.  Here's part of their wikipedia entry:

A. Schwab dry goods store is the only remaining original business on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. A family owned store, their motto is "If you can't find it at A. Schwab, you're probably better off without it!"

They were started in 1876 and haven't modernized the interior.  It's an old fashioned dry goods store.  They still have one of the mechanical fabric measures, for those of you old enough to remember when they ran the edge of the fabric through that to measure it.  It was a nice trip down memory lane.

We headed over to the Gibson Guitar factory for a tour, but it's inventory week and there was no production going on, so Steve opted to save the tour for another trip.  (We will be back.)  The next stop was Sun Records, where Rock and Roll was born.

Now, I'm not a musician and not much into music, but this is a historical place.  Sam Phillips,  owner of Sun Records, created a recording studio to record the music he heard in the fields as a young kid harvesting cotton.  He felt it needed to be recorded in order not to be lost.  In the beginning he recorded everything he could and would even record weddings and birthday parties to earn enough money to keep his studio going.  For $3, anyone could come in and cut a record.  Which is how he met Elvis.  It's a fascinating story, as is the history behind many of the songs.  I love this quote by Sam:

 Elvis, Carl Perkins (Blue Suede Shoes), Jerry Lee Lewis, and Johnny Cash all got their start at Sun Records.  Again, I'm quoting from Wikipedia -

Phillips's pivotal role in the early days of rock and roll was exemplified by a celebrated jam session on December 4, 1956 which came to be known as the Million Dollar Quartet. Jerry Lee Lewis was playing piano for a Carl Perkins recording session at Phillips's studio. When Elvis Presley walked in unexpectedly, Johnny Cash was called into the studio by Phillips, leading to an impromptu session featuring the four musicians.

The recording studio is still in use and hasn't been modernized.  I believe U2 has recorded there, along with local groups and anyone who wants a touch of history.

We bought two more souvenirs at Sun.  Steve found a white polo shirt, his trademark souvenir and we bought a CD of the original recording of the Million Dollar quartet.  It's fun to listen as the musicians talk to each other, sometimes during the songs.  There are just snatches of some songs and lots of gospel.  They actually don't know who all is recorded as the session went on for awhile and musicians came and went.  But it's a good listen.

After Sun, we headed for Graceland.  I'm not a big Elvis fan and I wasn't interested in touring his home, but for some reason I did want to drive by it.  So we did.  You can see it from the road.  It's a very nice looking large house, but not a mansion.

We headed back to the trailer to rescue Obi and get ready for our trek to Paducah, KY Thursday.  But before we left our home on the Mississippi, I wanted to take one last picture.

This is the building that houses the laundry at our campground.  The laundry is on the second floor and still got wiped out by the flood of 2011.  The top of the sign is the flood crest.

Most of the rest of the buildings at this campground are on wheels and can be pulled out during a flood.

Our next stop was Paducah, KY, Quilt City, USA.  The National Quilt Museum is there, as is the headquarters of the American Quilters Society.  It's also a very historic town, having been laid out by William Clark of Lewis and Clark fame.  It's a fairly major port on the Ohio and we saw several barges being pushed along.

Saving the quilt museum for our full day in Paducah, we headed downtown to the historic district and checked out the murals painted on the flood wall.  Paducah is protected by 12 miles of flood walls that were built after a 1937 flood devastated the city.  In the downtown area, the wall is decorated by historical paintings that are quite well done.  We went through the wall and watched the tug boats moving the barges around.  My impression of ports is lots of activity, but with container shipping and other mechanization, there's not much activity on land.  And that had moved upstream a bit from downtown.  We could see the huge crane used to load the containers onto barges.  At least I think that's what the crane is used for.

We did stop at a quilt store and I bought some equipment.  I did reign in the urge to buy any fabric; I have more than enough!

And we finally make it to today, Friday, our last day before we head for home.  We drove into the quilt museum and spent most of the day there.  Interesting and amazing quilts that I found somewhat intimidating.  I don't have the time, energy, or imagination to create most of what I saw.  My last project was a quilt for Maria, our granddaughter.  In case you can't tell, it's a combination of the American and Russian flags.

But the quilts do inspire me to go home and sew.  Maybe I'll get some of my unfinished projects done. 

And we came away with a few more souvenirs.  I bought a tshirt and a couple of books.  

We're back in the trailer and trying to figure out what all we need to do before we head for home tomorrow.  We should be home by late afternoon tomorrow.  If anyone wants to stop by and say hi in the next few days, we'd love to see you!  We have missed all our friends.

That's all for now.

Deb

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

This is the view out our back window.

That's the mighty Mississippi River rolling by.  Thanks to Diane and Roger Norris's blog,  

http://travelwithwhippets.blogspot.com , we are staying at the Tom Sawyer Mississippi River RV Park.  Diane is Charley, Becky and John's cousin and travels full time in their motor home.  Only they winter in south Texas.  Anyway, we've gotten lots of good tips from them and this is one of them.  The view above is from our back window.  Right now from the side window I'm seeing the lights of Memphis, Tennessee, where we spent the afternoon.  We're here for two nights and I'd love to stay for more.  I love to watch the water.

Sunday we were still at Natasha's.  We spent most of the day packing and getting ready to leave the next day.   Steve did take some time out to watch basketball with Maria.

I had previously been thinking that we had managed quite well for 3 months with a limited amount of "things".  Not so limited - it took two loads to get it all out to the trailer!  Steve took one load Sunday afternoon and we loaded up the rest Monday morning.

But even with all the shifting of stuff from the truck to the trailer, we managed to get on the road out of Dallas shortly after 10 am.  We had a long day of travel to a campground near Benton, Ark.  We were traveling mostly east but some north, so East North East, I think.  We should have been heading into colder climates, but Mother Nature seems to have some tricks up her sleeve.  In areas, the trees were greener than in Dallas, we saw some daffodils blooming and even some redbuds.  There were certainly more flowering trees than we had seen in Dallas.  Arkansas is a bit hilly, so we may have been seeing the effects of some micro climates along the way.

We did manage to pull into JB's RV campground before dark and even had time for a walk down to the lake before supper.  We had stayed here overnight on our way down to Dallas in December and found it a reasonable place.  They have long, level pull through sites for us transient RVers and are close to the highway, although you wouldn't know it.  No water view,  but the view from the back window wasn't bad.

We got the inside of the trailer sorted out and it felt like home again.  As I sit here looking at the lights of Memphis, I realize how much we are enjoying this.  The setup in the trailer works quite well and does feel like home.  Except maybe not to Obi.  After our time in Dallas, he wasn't exactly thrilled about getting back into the truck.

This morning we left JB's campground and headed for Memphis.  That took us around Little Rock, Arkansas.  Did you know that Little Rock is a port?  It sits on the Arkansas River that flows to the Mississippi River.  The Arkansas River is quite wide and we saw barges being floated down it. I'm learning a lot on this trip.

Tom Sawyer's RV Park is just south of West Memphis, Arkansas, which is just across the river from Memphis, Tennessee.  We were parked and set up shortly after noon and took off for some sightseeing in Memphis.  We decided on the Museum of Rock and Soul, just south of Beale Street, birthplace of the blues.

The Museum was a great trip down memory lane.  They show a short film and then set you up with an audio device and headphones, so that as you are going through the museum, you can hear about the displays and listen to some of the music associated with the displays.  There was a lot of music from my childhood and teenage years.  A lot of interesting anecdotes about how people got started and how some songs came about.  Elvis Presley's "It's all right" was just the musicians jamming during a break, singing an old blues tune with an upbeat.

Obi's insisting that it's time for bed, so that's all for now.

Deb