Arrived today in Memphis. Once set up, we drove to see the downtown Memphis area and did the same in the evening. For the evening, we parked and walked Beale Street which is a colorful stretch of pedestrian-only roadway with various neon signs fr various jazz and music bars, as well as restaurants. All of the spots were pretty much deserted, even though a couple of them did have live bands playing. We ourselves did not care to go into any of them, due to the rapid rise of the omicron variant of COVID. Note to ourselves, it would be worth coming back here in the future, post-COVID.
Claudette’s 2 Cents: Today’s driving day was somewhat of a challenge – in that we had to avoid the potholes. There were so many of them that the news stations asked people to report any accidents they had due to the potholes. I mean, that’s serious stuff. We saw many vehicles on the side of the road with flat tires.
Our camping was at Graceland – no seriously – all we had to do was walk through the parking and there we were. We checked out where to get our tickets and info about the tours. There were maybe 10 people total. The week before was Elvis’ birthday so they had been swamped according to one lady working there.
Today was the first day we were able to use our Black Stone Grill and eat outside. The weather was that nice.
Memphis is not what I expected. It was smaller to start with and very nice. It reminded me a bit of Philly – artwork on the buildings and outdoors, Vegas because of the lights, and New Orleans because people drank while walking on the streets. I loved seeing the painted guitars every 20 feet or so and the musical notes on the ground.
There was a lot of construction on River Front as well – new and beautiful homes. And like many places we’ve seen, there is a lot of poverty here too.
