A little less conversation, a little more action please!

We start the story in Memphis, Tennessee. We woke up in our motel near Graceland, I had borrowed a phone charger from the guy at the desk and he said I could keep it because he had a whole box of them from when people leave them behind, which was handy because I had left mine in a motel a few days before.

We made our way a few blocks west to the Graceland complex, this is an American institution, Elvis was the voice of a generation! When you drive up you have to park across the road from his actual house, across the road is also where all the gift shops and extra exhibits are, like his car collection and his clothes collection. You queue up to get on a bus that takes you across the road (typical). We had an audio set and we had the full tour around the house, the house is very 70’s, it was flash and everything was over the top, carpet on the floors, walls and ceilings. It was an education on the life of Elvis, it was very interesting and it was incredible some of the things he achieved, he never did a show outside of North America, here are some photos.

The rest of the exhibits that weren’t attached to his actual house were just tacky and kind of an insult to his legacy, but I guess its all this area really has to offer so they have gone all out.

We headed back on the road; we were going to Little Rock, Arkansas. We stopped along the way for fuel, jerky and peaches at the most ghetto BP I’ve ever been to, they were selling knives and home made perfumes.

The plan was to take in a Man vs. Food place en-route to Little Rock, there was a place called Cotham Mercantile, it made the Hubcap burger, a massive burger the size of a Hubcap. Cotham Mercantile was located east of Little Rock so we would be passing the general area into the city, except that it was still about 30minutes off the highway. We pulled up and it is literally the only place along a small country lane in the middle of nowhere, and I can’t stress out it really is in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately for you, the reader, and us the place was closed! It is only open at weekends! Here is a picture to show you how derelict it looks.

We headed into Little Rock drowning in disappointment; we hadn’t eaten all day in anticipation of this burger so we were now on the verge of starvation. Little Rock is a very slow town; there were a lot of run down buildings along the road in. We went into the main area of town, the River Market district, it was pretty dead, it was around 3 and all the restaurants and food stalls had closed or were closing, apparently we had missed the lunch rush, there was only one place open, it was selling general BBQ foods and it just so happened that it was one of the top 10 meals we have had so far, so swings and roundabouts! Perhaps it was because we were so hungry, or perhaps because there was nobody really around and he gave us huge portions, but it was really good, we had a platter of Italian spicy sausage, BBQ chicken, pulled pork and ribs with a side of potato salad, jambalaya and corn bread (the jambalaya wasn’t so great).

We wolfed down our meals and tried to find anything to do! But there is literally nothing to do there; we thought at least we could find something about President Clinton, but there wasn’t much. We walked outside the River Market building and up in the sky there was an ominous black cloud approaching, I could see it rolling towards us, it was crazy and it was massive! Once it came overhead it dropped a lake onto Little Rock, in a spit second I was drenched through, a guy in a booth shouted for us to come in out of the rain, he was selling T-shirts and all his signs had blown over, we watched out at people who looked like they had fallen into a river, the streets flooded in 5 minutes, it was insane, thunder and lightening and it went dark. Very cool, I love extreme weather, but then just like that it stopped, as quickly as it came, it finished, we thanked the guy who took us in and bode him farewell.

We were on the look out for a Wal-Mart, there was one just off the highway and we pulled in, we were planning on building a fire somewhere in Hot Springs national park and we wanted to make Smores, so we had to get supplies, we also got a football. Its interesting to note that this was a huge Wal-Mart, yet it had not one piece of fresh food in it, that’s probably a reason why America has a weight issue.

We headed an hour out of Little Rock, southwest, to Hot Springs national park. It was a beautiful place, we went up about a 1000m elevation into the park, and we found a campsite and pulled our car into a section and started to build a fire in one of the grills. We collected a whole bunch of firewood and burnt a lot of the random papers that we didn’t need in the car. It was brilliant fun, it was hot and humid but it had a nice breeze, there was a stream running right beside the car. We then started making smores, smores are where you get a marshmallow and melt it on the fire then stick it between two Graham crackers with a piece of chocolate in there which gets melted by the heat of the marshmallow. They were really good, I see why my American friends raved about them, and they are a lot of fun to make.

We washed from a tap they had at the site, I showed Paolo the Korean way of washing from a tap. We played cards for a bit and then tried to sleep in the car, we watched a movie called Grown Ups with Adam Sandler, it was about a group of friends who loose touch but discover their friendship while out on a camping trip which I thought was quite apt for the situation, it just happened to be the only film I had on my laptop.

Mosquitos raped me and trying to sleep was way to hot, we were drenched in sweat in about an hour. Neither of us could sleep, so we decided to get on the road, we had a 8 hour drive ahead, so we figured there was no harm in getting some of it out of the way. Paolo drove, I fell asleep…