The house that Coke built 8/9/2018

The drive from Memphis to Mobile was a memorable one. Following Google's directions, we headed east in Mississippi on Route 19, a two-lane, narrow road, with a 55 mph speed limit. There wasn't a lot of traffic, until...we rounded a big sweeping curve to find a half a manufactured house barreling down the road toward us, taking up not only its own lane, but a healthy portion of ours. Ray did an admirable job keeping us on the road that had a 1 foot shoulder. Later, on some county road, again directed by Google, we rolled down a similar road to find an unmarked railroad bridge ahead of us. What was the clearance? We needed at least 13 feet to get under the bridge unscathed. A judgement was made. We proceeded. Success. After that, we ran into road construction, where workers were painting lines on the highway. It would have been easier if the cones to block off the right lane and allow for painting had not been placed at least a foot to the left of the striping. That left clear road just about the width of the RV to travel on. Result? We ran over a cone that collided with the front of the car. Fortunately, no permanent damage was done. All in a day's drive!

We are staying at a lovely state park just outside of Mobile, and on Mobile Bay. Tomorrow we visit

Bellingrath Gardens.

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Walter Bellingrath was one of the first Coca-Cola bottlers in the Southeast, and with his wealth built Bellingrath Gardens and home. He and his wife, Bessie, lived in the home which has since been converted into a museum. The gardens opened to the public in 1932.

Mr. and Mrs. B lived in Mobile, but wanted a place to get away from the pressures of life there, so they purchased a fishing camp on the Fowl River in 1917. The transformation from the "Belle Camp" fishing post into what is now Bellingrath Gardens and Home is largely thanks to Mrs. B, who had married Walter in 1906. Mrs. B began developing the gardens in 1927. The 10,500 square foot home was completed in 1935. That's a pretty big house for people who had no children.

The unique feature of this home is that it is all original. All the furniture and decorations are exactly as the Bellingraths left them, and

everything is pristine, exactly as if the Bellingraths had just left. The house and gardens have been maintained exactly as the Bellingraths did while they were living here.

When we originally showed up for the house tour, there were about 15 other people queued up for the tour. We opted to wait for the next tour, and are glad we did. We had our own personal tour, as there were no others at that time.

The house is beautiful, though ornate, Mrs. B's taste. The setting is serene. Apparently, spring is the time to come: azaleas and camellias are in bloom everywhere, and the weather is cooler and a bit drier. We'll be back.

Photos are here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/kA8aK79E11nTyjK3A

All hail the King! 8/17/2018

There's a reason why, nearly 40 years after he died, Elvis Presley is still revered as "The King". We are in Memphis, TN, with the express reason to visit Graceland. As luck would have it, we were able to get a reservation at the Graceland RV park, within a 5 minute walk of its namesake. We are staying on Blue Suede Lane, right around the corner from Don't Be Cruel Lane.

Graceland the house is pretty much as Elvis left it in 1977 when he died. What impressed Ray and me is that although Elvis was richer than rich, the house is pretty liveable. He took the home, that was built in 1939, and made it his own. The style is distinctly 1970s: there are mirrors everywhere, there

is a room with carpeting on the ceiling, faux fur is common. But the house as a whole is livable. It's not what I would expect for a culture icon.

But the Graceland tour is about so much more than the house tour. Elvis' planes and autos and motorcycles are on display in a separate area. His military, movie and recording careers all had their separate areas of museum display. There is a fascinating exhibition devoted to Sam Phillips

and Sun Records, essentially the beginnings of rock and blues music as we know it. And there is an awesome area devoted to how Elvis influenced all of the music of today: with quotes from Frank Sinatra, to Justin Timberlake to Gene Simmons to Robert Plante to Michael Buble and Springsteen. James Brown had such respect and love for him, he even considered Elvis his brother.

We had been unaware of the fact that Elvis was a significant benefactor to many charities, and was very private about it. Over the course of his career, he received numerous awards, but he showed up to receive only one, as one of the 10 Outstanding Young Men of America 1970, given by the Jaycees, probably because it meant the most to him. It was the first time, as an entertainer, that he had been accepted on the same level as others in fields like biological research, business, medicine and national affairs.

We came away from the 5 or so hours we spent at the Graceland complex with a new appreciation for Elvis and the impact he had on all of music and culture.

Photos of the house, grounds and museum stuff are here-- the descriptions of the pictures will tell you what you're looking at. :  https://photos.app.goo.gl/xH4SRQZ4P6TevDHF6

Toys and hills and heat 8/6/2018

There is a venue in Branson that touts itself as "The World's Largest Toy Museum".  That may be a bit of hype, but the place is chock full of  toys.  Outside the World’s Largest Toy Museum, two larger-than-life toy soldiers flank the entranceway, which leads to a collection of more than one million toys from the 19th century to today. antique tin fire trucks, a 1959 British Embassy Rolls-Royce,
superhero action figures, Matchbox cars, and retro lunchboxes, a more compact version of the dinner trays kids used to carry to school, a BB gun museum (a real hoot: my, how the world has changed), a Teddy Bear Museum, collections of Barbies, GI Joes, Military toys, and Star Wars figures.

We browsed the collections over the course of 4 hours, enjoying reminiscing over the stuff of our childhoods: paper dolls, army men, cap guns, Patty Playpal, pick-up-stix and so much more. The proprietors, like most businesses in this area, are open about their Christianity, and have not only left Bibles open in various locations around he museum, but have placed printed Bible quotes on many of the display shelves.

More pictures here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/JonupDgNwvBeVD6M6

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On Sunday we headed down to Table Rock State Park, just south of Branson, and took a hike along the lake rim trail. The weather was hot and sunny, and we only made 3 miles before the heat (in the upper 90s) had taken its toll, so we decided to retreat to the air conditioned car to see a bit more of the Ozarks in the area. We drove over to the College of the Ozarks, a Christian University that offers free tuition to students in exchange for work that they do on campus. The program requires students to work 15 hours a week at an on-campus work station and two 40-hour work weeks during breaks. It has a beautiful  campus at the top of a ridge in the Ozarks. The college has a museum there that includes the original Clampett's truck from the TV show Beverly Hillbillies. But being a Christian University, the museum was closed on Sunday.

We're off to Memphis tomorrow!

Branson day 2 8/4/2018

Since we had tickets to a show this evening, we thought we'd check out some of the surrounding countryside, and drove to the Ruth and Paul Henning Conservation area a short distance from our campground. It is a forested 1534 acre nature preserve with trails and an observation tower. The day was hot, but the first trail we took was shaded and, as an added bonus, paved, and led to the observation tower. I think the reason they paved the trail was that it is so hilly, that it would probably erode quickly without the hard surface. The observation tower was needed to get a view: the trees and underbrush were so thick. We climbed the metal observation tower, and got the touted 360 degree view of Branson and the Ozarks in the area. On the way back to the trailhead, we met a man who inquired about the trail and engaged him in conversation. He was visiting Branson with his family and was from Lincoln, Nebraska, about 400 miles away. He said he and his family didn't travel much and hadn't really been outside of Nebraska for a while. He and his wife couldn't imagine traveling with his 2 adolescent sons. That's just a completely different perspective from ours, and I know it's shared by a lot of people.

While at the conservation area, we tried another loop trail, this time, not paved, but rocky, hilly, and for us, sweaty. We remembered why we love to hike in the mountains out west in the summer. We'll have to come back to the Ozarks in the fall some time.

Back to the RV for a glass (or two) of wine, and then out for the evening dinner show of Dolly Parton's Stampede. They tell you to arrive early for the pre-show, and we're glad we did. On a central stage, flanked by tables and chairs on all sides, 3 brothers entertained with Bluegrass music. You haven't lived until you've heard a bluegrass rendition of Stayin' Alive or Smoke in the Water! That

was lots of fun. The Stampede show is dinner and live entertainment featuring thirty-two horses and dozens of riders performing trick riding and competitions inside a huge 35,000-square-foot arena. Dinner is served during the performance, and you eat without utensils. They serve up warm towels at the end of dinner to clean up. It was a family-friendly show, with interludes like a chicken race, where kids from the audience chased chickens to the finish line. Like much of the Midwest and south, there is no obvious cynicism about love of family, love of God, and love of country. The Dolly show ended with Dolly (not in person) singing a patriotic song with all the riders dressed in red, white and blue, and brandishing large American flags while galloping around the arena.

A few photos are here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/fkTCWgALc8Q4C1tAA

Branson 8/4/2018

Branson, MO has all the commercialism of Gatlinburg, TN, the music of Nashville, and the beauty of Asheville, NC. Home to over 100 live shows that range from magic to rock 'n' roll, country, family harmonies, comedy, variety, gospel and dinner shows, it is set in the absolute beauty of the Ozarks. The Ozark Mountains may not have the soaring, breath-taking sheer cliffs and alpine vistas of the Rockies, but their tree-covered hills and valleys are just as scenic and engaging.

We've never visited this area before, so we will be here for 5 nights to check it out. 

Our campground is a short distance from the entertainment strip, but has the quiet, country feel of a place much further away. Like all of Branson (and I suspect, all of the Ozarks), it is very hilly. All of the campsites are in tiers set along the hillsides, one row of sites above the next. As far as I could tell, pretty much all of the campgrounds in the area are the same set up. When we checked in, we found that we could get tickets for any of the shows through their preferred provider at a discount. When we perused the list, we chose 2 and called to order tickets. Within 15 minutes, the tickets were delivered to our RV door. 

The first show we saw was the Shanghai Acrobats, a show that really was amazing. For 2 hours with a 15 minute intermission, we saw a continuous stream of acrobatic acts. One of the craziest (and best) acts was a young man who held the handle of a sword in his mouth and balanced an upright stemmed wine glass on the edge of the sword blade, and slid the wine glass (without touching it) up and down the blade. Then he did the same thing and added liquid to the glass. Then he did contortions while holding the glass with liquid on the blade. He had the audience check out both the glass and the sword to confirm that they were legit. Great show!

Trees again! 8/3/2018

From our campground in Homewood, KS, we headed east and south toward Branson, MO where we will see a few shows and from which we will explore the Ozarks.

The first noticeable change came just west of Salina, KS. We could see many more trees along the road, replacing the open prairie. By the time we reached the Missouri border, trees were everywhere, and the hills were becoming blanketed, and the land much more hilly. As we drove east, in Peoria, KS we passed a farm with a tree growing inside a silo. It would have been difficult to turn around and come back to snap a picture of it, so we moved on. But it looked like this:

Apparently, that phenomenon is not that uncommon here in the Midwest. The abandoned silo provided a sheltered spot for the tree seed to take hold.

On to Branson!
A few photos are here
https://photos.app.goo.gl/x4Xafv5WwVTHX8TQ7

Prairie 8/2/2018

On the way to our stop for the night in Homewood, KS, we visited the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. Located in the Flint Hills, it protects a small portion of tallgrass prairie that once covered this continent. Of the 400,000 square miles of tallgrass prairie that used to exist, only about 4% remains, mostly in the Flint Hills of Kansas. The Preserve used to be the Spring Hill/ Z-Bar Ranch. It's a different kin
d of National Park in that it is under public-private management of the National Park Service and the Nature Conservancy.

The ranch home and farm buildings are open to the public for self-guided tours. The buildings are all made of Kansas limestone, the most common rock here, recalling that Kansas was under the sea epochs ago. The limestone formed from ancient marine deposits. (As an aside, in Kansas, it was

common for land owners to use limestone fenceposts rather than wood which was a scarce commodity.) For its day, the house was a grand work of art.

We took a loop trail that meandered through the prairie and a bison pasture. We were wary of coming too close, as we passed a lone bull. We saw many of the herd at a distance. It's a wonderful and unique experience (for us, anyway), to stand in an open field, and see the horizon in all directions, not a tree or bush in sight. Field met sky everywhere we looked. It's not hard to imagine the thundering sound of a herd of thousands of bison, just beyond view, over the hilltop. But we walked in the peaceful quiet of the prairie, with the only sounds being the grasshopper sparrows and meadowlarks that flew up from the grass as we passed.

Photos are here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/7pXWYTrKq3WsfATU6