Memphis - May 21, 2005
| Tour of Southern States (9 of 9) : |
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After visiting Graceland, we checked into a hotel in the hospital district of Memphis. Being Saturday night, all downtown hotels were full. We had a jolly nice walk around Memphis and saw the Mississippi River and Beale Street. We went to see "Star Wars Episode 3" in a fantastic cinema in Peabody Place. It's the biggest screen I've ever seen outside of an IMax and had amazing sound.
While walking into Memphis, we walked past "Sun Studios" where Elvis cut his first 5 hit records. Many other mega stars also started with Sun - Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbinson and Charlie Rich to name just a few. The whole place is about 2000 square feet - just a little shop front.
Memphis is not an attractive city - it reminded me of Liverpool or Glasgow in the UK. Maybe that's got a lot to do with music. Memphis is the birth place of soul, and of course Rock'n'Roll. There might be some connection between urban poverty and music. Other examples are of course Buddy Holly in Lubbock, Texas and motown music from Detroit.
On Sunday we went to the "National Civil Rights Museum" - situated at the Lorraire Motel where Dr Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968. Being Sunday morning, the museum was closed. So we went to the Mississippi River Park which is a scale model of the Mississippi (30 inch to the mile) - so it's big. Ali and I both learned a lot about the continental rivers of the USA from the model.
Like all great vacations, it had to end sometime and we flew back to California on Sunday afternoon. We were astonished to see about 100-150 FedEx DC10s at Memphis Airport. It turns out that Memphis is the busiest cargo airport in the world. So it's the major forwarding center for air freight in the USA. You learn something every day.
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General Somebody |
Sun Studio |
The birthplace of R&R |
Plaque at Sun Studio |
About Sun Records |
Mecca for R&R |
The Ballpark |
Tram in downtown |
Looking the other way |
Flags on Mud Island |
River boat paddlers |
Old Man River |
Beale St - home of the blues |
In Beale Street |
EP Plaza |
The King's Statue |
About Beale Street |
Beale Street |
About the piano bar |
Band entertaining the crowd |
More about Beale Street |
Inside Peabody Place |
The Lorraine Motel |
Where King was killed |
Room 306 |
National Civil Rights Museum |
About King |
Ramesses the Great |
Ramesses and Pyramid |
The Pyramid |
Driving past the pyramid |
Mississippi Bridge |
Ohio River System |
Tennessee River System |
The River Park - model of Mississippi |
The Missouri River System |
Cairo - Mississippi and Ohio |
About Cairo, Illinois |
Memphis and Mud Island |
From airport to city |
Graceland |
Graceland to the city |
The Arkansas River System |
Barge on river |
At Vicksburg |
Battle field and river |
New Orleans French Quarter |
State and other flags |
Old Man River - quite a sight |
Another shot of flags |
Memphis downtown |
The Paddlers |
100's of FedEx aircraft |
Even more FedEx planes |
Airforce heavy lifters |
World's busiest air cargo airport |
