Day 13...Memphis

Today we woke up early to head over to Sun Studio, where Elvis, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis got their start.  It was a great tour, which included a visit to the small museum they have upstairs (a boarding house at the time when the studio first opened), with fun things like Elvis' social security card and high school diploma, as well as telegrams sent after his first television appearance, plus things from Johnny Cash and B.B. King.  From there, we headed downstairs to the recording studio, which closed for a while, but is once again open for business.  Tons of modern-day artists have cut albums there, and U2 even went there to record three songs from Rattle and Hum.  Sun Studio is also the location of the famous recording between the Million Dollar Quartet.  The best part was that they actually use song recordings to enhance the tour.  They have a mini cafe in the gift shop area and have a free shuttle that goes in a loop between the studio, Beale Street, Heartbreak Hotel (unimpressive, at least from the outside) and Graceland.

So, after our tour, we went down to Beale Street via shuttle and toured the Gibson Guitar Factory.  Unfortunately,  they don't allow photos inside, but the tour itself was really interesting.  You literally get to walk the floors of the factory, seeing everything from the wood as it's received at the factory, through the spray painting of the finished guitar.  As someone who is not a guitar player, it was still amazing to see all the time and effort that goes into making each one.  For anyone that is, you can apparently get insane discounts on guitars by purchasing them at their gift shop, the only one of the Gibson Factories that will sell to the public.

We got back on the Sun Studio shuttle which stopped at Heartbreak Hotel and then went on to Graceland.  We were dropped off at the ticket area, which is actually across the street from the mansion...all on a pretty major road, which was kind of surprising.  We decided against the Graceland tour, which seemed insanely overpriced and thought about going to his automobile museum, which is actually a separate charge from the mansion, but ultimately ended up enjoying some peanut butter and banana sandwiches at one of the local restaurants, while we waited for the shuttle to return.  Delicious.  We also creepily walked across the street to take some pictures of the house from outside the fence...it's actually pretty normal looking from the outside...who knew?

We went back to Sun Studio to pick up Raquel and headed to the hotel for a nap before dinner.  Life on the road can be exhausting!  We headed out to dinner at Rendezvous, a famous barbecue restaurant, around since the 1940's.  It seemed to be a bit of a tourist trap, but it's easy to see why - amazing dry-rub smoked BBQ ribs.  Hard to go wrong with that combination.  It's not about the service (speedy servers trying to get as many people fed as quickly as possible), the decor (appears to be one of the first places to hang random crap on all the walls) or the paper plate/plastic utensil place settings.  It's about the food...everything is served with coleslaw and baked beans...there are really no other options...and they even reference the fact that it's crazy that some people would want something besides ribs on the menu.  So, we went with combo plates - ribs/brisket for me and ribs/chicken for Andy...no complaints here :)

We walked down Beale Street briefly after dinner - I had intentions of a frozen drink in a guitar cup, but by the time we finished eating, it just didn't seem like the wisest decision.  Plus, it seems that it was biker day on Beale because there were tons of  motorcycles lining the streets, making it hard to walk down the crowded sidewalks.  Without the want for drinks, we figured it would be tough to hang out in a bar listening to blues, so we are back at the hotel.  We actually have a pretty decent drive tomorrow as we head to the Big D.