We are staying at T.O. Fuller State Park, the first African American park west of the Mississippi (now it's for everybody). It seems like a nice park, woodsy and with some important Native American mounds, but it is downwind of a sewage plant and you really smell it when the wind blows from the south. We're on an "island" in the Mississippi just within the Memphis city limits, and definitely in the industrial part of town. There's a Fleishman's yeast plant and an oil refinery just outside the park. The best part of this site is there is a huge play structure just outside the RV, for Katie.

Friday we arrived and set up, and then drove into town and checked out Beale Street, famous for its Blues music. No live music was playing, but the street was blocked off and lots of cops around, and then we remembered that GW Bush was to be in Memphis on Friday. Maybe his crew hadn't quite left yet. Here's Beale Street: it's mostly souvenier places, bars, and restaurants.

We ate at a restaurant called "Pig." The BBQ pork was good and the baked beans were the best I've tasted. We also walked through the police museum there on Beale Street, in an old precinct building. It's free and they have lots of loaded dice, confiscated drug stuff, a cell you can walk into, and a couple pages of arrest records from 1859, including lots of slaves arrested for walking into town without passes. The funnest thing on Beale Street is the old Schwab's general store. It's still got its old cases and tables, and still sells some clothes upstairs, but other than that it's just tourist junk for sale, but it's worth it to see their "museum" on the second floor (old stuff they used to sell that you can pick up and figure out for yourself what they were). If you visit Memphis, you gotta see this place.




Katie wearing a pizza hat at Schwab's

Hamburger hat

Mark took Katie to the zoo the next afternoon. They got to see giant pandas as well as the usual animals. Here are the pics:

If we had known someone here, I bet we would have seen a lot more of Memphis. When we drove around on our own, we ended up in a lot of bad neighborhoods (trying to find a supermarket was a real challenge). We didn't make it to Graceland, but that wasn't as high on our list.

Today we are driving to Lawrenceburg, an Amish town in south central Tennessee, and we'll be staying at David Crockett State Park. We get to cross the Natchez Trace again (maybe we'll get to drive on it after Lawrenceburg).

Changing the subject, Katie has gotten better with her words (you can't get her to say "pocsiple" anymore, for instance) but sometimes she'll say, in perfect seriousness, "that's very instring to me." It's one of her last couple of holdouts. I can't remember the other one right now, but if I think of it I'll put it down so I don't forget.