We got another great start to our road trip this morning as we again packed up our things and headed to breakfast. Once again we referred to the Road Food book the Griffins had purchased for us prior to leaving, and we found a little place called the Blue Plate Cafe where we had a down home Memphis breakfast. The breakfast was absolutely delicious as Emily may get around to telling you. As we waited for our check we were beaming with excitement to get to Graceland!
As we approached Graceland, you could sense the cheese factor multiplying with each mile we traveled. I had this vision of seeing 100 Elvis impersonators lining Elvis Presley Blvd. as the car approached. It wasn’t quite that bad, but you knew you were in Tourist Town. We got out of the car, headed to the ticket booth, spent way to much money to see a bunch of Elvis crap, and started to explore.
The first stop on the tour was Elvis’ mansion that he purchased when he was 22 years old. It was still decorated as it was when he lived there, and boy was it tacky! There was an audio tour that went along with the mansion so we were able to learn a little about the King as we made our way past the walls with the green shag carpet.
After the tour of the mansion we went through the Elvis car museum. Here were a bunch of cars and golf carts that Elvis owned throughout his life. I am not a huge car nut, but you could tell that these cars were pretty cool for their day. After the car museum we got to tour his private jet, the Lisa Marie, which was very cool. He really traveled in style (solid gold sinks and all). After a little more exploration and gift shopping, we decided we had enough of Graceland and began our quest for Atlanta.
Since we had such a late breakfast, we weren’t hungry for lunch until we reached Tupelo, MS, which just so happened to be the birthplace of Elvis. In reading some of our tour guides we found out that Elvis used to eat at a drive in restaurant in Tupelo. Of course the book didn’t tell us the name of the place, just that it existed. Well, a short cell phone conversation with our good friend Jon Tettambel produced a successful web search of the name of the restaurant. Johnnie’s Drive-In restaurant was our new destination.
When we arrived at Johnnie’s we realized that this place was an absolute “dive” as my mom would call it, but we forged ahead. We both ordered BBQ sandwiches and had some fries and onion rings to go along with it. Boy, are we eating healthy on this road trip. After our last artery was completely clogged we got back in the car and made our way to Atlanta.
Well, just as we were saying how smooth our travels had been as far as not getting stuck in any traffic, leave it to Birmingham to reverse our luck. Just as we passed through Birmingham, we hit a wall of traffic that was at a complete stop. We waited for quite a while, (can’t tell you how long because it is a trivia question) and we finally continued our our journey.
After capping off our fine eating day with a little Mickey D’s (it was too late for any “authentic eating” at that point) we arrived in Atlanta and crashed. Another full and enjoyable day on the road.