Sander, Daniëlle & EmilyOur Family life...

Our Family life...

Day 11: Memphis, TN > Effingham, IL

Everyone had a decent night of sleep, mama had a little bit more action as the others as you can see in the picture below. Yes that’s Emily her left foot!

At 7:45am everyone was out of bed and at 9am everyone had showered and the car was loaded to go to Graceland!

On our way to Graceland we stopped at the McDonalds for a sandwich (me) and coffee (mama). And at 9:15 sharp we turned into the Graceland Parking lot. The whole area is bigger as we expected and we already figured that we would need more time as we had in mind when we woke up.

We started with a movie before we entered a shuttle which brought us a across the street to walk to Graceland itself, we could have walked the 100 Meter ourselves but this was mich more fun for Emily.

Everything is very well organized, we got iPads as a self-guided tour which supported 9 languages including both German and Dutch. First we thought the Dutch was a joke but every fifth family/group/couple we saw was speaking Dutch. We got to see all the rooms in the house including the parts which Elvis had added over the time he owned Graceland. He already owned a microwave, he bought it for just 630$, not bad for that time I guess?

The trophy room was made into a gallery with photos, letters and bills from when he was a live. Interesting to see a bill for the swimming pool for just 8500$.

Last stop of the tour though the house was the Meditation Garden, this is where Elvis and his closest relatives are buried nowadays.

After we got back to the museum part we got to see the more interesting things, at least for us. His cars, a museum about his time in the army (in Germany) and off course his jumpsuits, suits and a gigantic collection of his golden records.

We ended the visit with a lunch at Gladys’ Diner. Emily went for a hotdog, mama and I for for the southern fried chicken.

And then it was time for another 5 hours in the car. Just a couple minutes in the car we already entered Arkansas, state #13.

The drive was very boring and lucky for us Emily fell a sleep quickly.

Quicker as we expected we entered state #14, Missouri. We also decided to take a short detour through Cape Girardeau to score a coffee and a Starbucks souvenir tumbler, the mugs where sold out.

With just 2 hours to go Danielle took over the wheel and in 10 minutes we made it to Illinois over a beautiful bridge.

After we arrived in Effingham at our next Holiday Inn hotel we got some groceries at the nearby Walmart before we called it a night.

Tomorrow we’ll go further north!

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