Memphis it is then. We spend our motel evening in tuscaloosa at a little bar and grill which is really nice.  There's a good brekkie included with the room and we're on the road nice and early and on outr way to Memphis.

We can't resist a stop off in Tupelo.  We came here 10 years ago with our dear friends Steve and Pauline and had just the best of times.  The birthplace remains the same and it's still staggering to consider how popular culture turned on a pin in this place.  I doubt the whole place, lock, stock and barrel is as valuable as a sink plug in Graceland.

The place has certainly grown as a "destination" we have a garden of remembrance, a convention hall, the original church where young Elvis used to listen to gospel music has been picked upo and transported here, the gift hall is around 10 times the size it was.  Disconcertingly, above the urinal in the gents restroom Elvis in Hawaii is playing on a TV.

The weather has really changed, it's Tenessee hot!  Kim has of course caught the kind of cold you can only catch in 90 degree heat.  We plan to stay on the outskirts of town, gives us a chance to catch up with laundry, blog and to plan forward a little bit before we hit the flesh pots of downtown Memphis.

On Sunday we take the chance to head out to Shelby Farm Park.  It's a great place, loads of lakes, wooded walks a couple of restaraunts.  If only our American brothers and Sisters could bear to be more than 10 metres from their cars it could be idylic.  As  it is the whole park land is criss crossed by well metalled roads and SUVs pumping sub-bass prowl around. Good for bird life though, we spot ospreys, storks, cardinals and the obligatory soaring buzzards before we pop back to the motel after some lunch and hunch over our USA map with a cold beer and decide where next.

Into Memphis proper, it's quiet we can stroll up Beale street and check all the bars and honky tonks we recall from our last visit.  There are a couple of interesting gigs in town tonite including one in the hickory rib pit at the Rum and Boogie bar.  Now that sounds like good eating!!. 

It's got really really hot so of course we take the opportunity to go for a 20 mile walk through downtown Memphis. A trip up the river in a paddle steamer is a must and it's great to get a bit of shade from the feirce sun, enjoy a couple of icy cold beers in the breeze from the river as we chug up and down stream on the mighty missisippee (I've no idea if that's spelt right and neither am I going to check.)  Frome the Beale street landing it's a 20 or so minute walk to the Museum of the Civil rights Movement.  It's set around the motel where Martin Luther King was shot and killed.  The museum itself is shut today but we cfan walk around the outside of the motel which has been left as it was on the day. 

A couple of vintage cars are parked outside, from the guest house opposite, a line in paving and steel, tracks the bullet from an upstairs bathroom window to the wreath that stays there always marking the spot where Doctor King was killed.  I may have blanked it but I recall no memory of any mention of the loser that perpetrated this crime. It's for the best. 

It's impossible to stand at this memorial and not be moved by its restrained simplicity, there's a lady here talking to another couple of tourists and it seems she's a guide of some sort, it would be good to speak to her but I can't trust myself to speak.

There's a Charcoal barbecue joint here.  Rendevouze is in the basement of a building in a tiny alley a half a mile off Beale.  Kim has found it in a search for "top barbeque Rib restaraunts"  this place seems to win.  After a couple of beers at the flying saucer brew house we make our way over.

Down into the depths of this place and underground, what looks like a single shop front unit seems to stretch away foreever underground.  Room after brick lined room stuffed full of cases filled with memerobilia and knick knacks from old revolvers to chastity belts.  Just at floor level, behind us, are the kitchens, everything is cooked over coal and there's a 10 inch layer of dense smoke at ceiling level under which the cooks turn layers of ribs and beef brisket which have been dry rubbed and presumably slow cooked for hours, maybe days. It's real "you don't need no teef" stuff, no choice of sides, just slaw and barbeque beans and corn bread (Cawn brade) just delicious!

After that we need some blues and head to Beale street and tour the bars.  In the Blues Cafe, Earl the Pearl is playing with a  five peice band.  They sound amazing.  Earl looks about 70 and the black rythm section have that uncanny ability to seem to be doing absolutely nothing while making a sound which makes it impossible not to move your feet.  A guest harmonica player and vocalist sit in for a while then they're replaced by a black lady singer who belts out songs while seeming to move in 15 directions at once.  Great just great!