A bunch of weird stuff happened the day we drove to Memphis. We were about 15 minutes outside Lawrence, at 7am so it was still dark out, when we drove up on a sedan flipping around in the middle of the highway. Then we noticed that there was a van on its side in the left lane/into the median! We stopped and I called 911 and Nat got out and helped the guy get out of the van. He was fine! A couple hours later we came really close to getting in an accident ourselves, and then we were stopped in traffic on a country highway because a tractor was wrecked in a ditch! The weather wasn’t even bad or anything. It was super bright out, though ::side-eye emoji::

We stopped at Dear Crossing in Mammoth Spring, AR, (and saw the Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas movie props, ha ha) and we went a little out of our way to see Johnny Cash’s boyhood home in Dyess, AR. Then we got to Memphis, where we walked along the riverfront and saw the Yellow Fever Memorial and the memorial to Tom Lee, who in 1925 saved 32 people from drowning in the Mississippi River after a freak accident overturned a steamer on a sightseeing cruise (and he didn’t know how to swim). In the distance we could see the Memphis pyramid, which was built in the 90s as a sports arena and has been empty for years?! We had dinner at Flying Fish and then spent the night at our Elvis hotel, where we had a pool in the shape of a guitar, across the street from Graceland. In the morning we ran over to Graceland for the free walk-up admission to the Meditation Garden (it’s 7:30 to 8:30 and we got there at 8:28, oops) and then quickly saw the Crystal Shrine Grotto before leaving for New Orleans. Phew! Lots of pictures.