The Powerful National Civil Rights Museum – Memphis TN [October 13, 2017]

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed (assassinated, murdered) as he and a group of his advisers were walking along the balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.  The motel is now the site of the National Civil Rights Museum.  It is a serious, thoughtful, thought-provoking chronological record of the fight for African American personal rights and civil rights starting from the slave trade in Africa until today.  The museum effectively uses video, photographs, and oral history to tell the story.  There are a few artifacts, like the burned out Freedom Riders bus. (I wonder who during that tumultuous, difficult time had the foresight to save it.)  

The balcony.  Note the track of the bullet indicated by tiles on the ground

At the appropriate spot in the story, you are brought to the rooms where Dr. King and his advisers stayed.  The Lorraine Motel was where many Black visitors to segregated Memphis stayed.  The owner of the motel preserved the rooms as a bit of a shrine.  You can look out a window and see the track of the bullet, now displayed as tiles on the ground from the boarding house window to the motel balcony.  The Museum does not allow photography inside, especially to respect the memory of Dr. King in the motel room.  So, sadly, we have few photos to share with you.

Looking towards the boarding house from which the shots were fired

Outside the motel are video kiosks that focus on Dr. Kings assassination and why he was in Memphis to support the striking garbage workers.  The second part of the museum is located across the street in buildings that include the boarding house from where the shots were fired that killed Dr. King.  They have recreated from FBI photographs the boarding house bedroom where James Earl Ray stayed and the bathroom from which he fired.  This part of the museum focuses on the investigation to hunt the assassin, with artifacts and an interesting chronology of events leading up to the assassination as well as during the investigation.  There is also a section relating the different investigation into theories of conspiracies to commit the act.

The museum is intense and powerful.  We were told to expect to stay 1.5 hours.  We left feeling completely drained after 2.5 hours.  We had experienced about half of the content and were just unable to digest any more.  We canceled our remaining plans for the day, and went back to the motor home to think.  This is a museum that every person should visit.   Considering the current divisive politics happening in our country today, it is useful to look back at what brought us to where we are.  And to consider where we do not wish to return.

Where We Stayed...

Memphis is at the corner of Tennessee touching Mississippi to the South and Arkansas to the West across the Mississippi River.  We stayed in West Memphis, Arkansas at a campground on the flood plain between the levee and the River.  It had beautiful views.  Here are some pretty pictures.

Sunrise over the pond in front of our motor home.

We love Mississippi tugs and barges

This view of the River is from the Memphis shoreline.

This is how we roll - well actually - This is how we look when we aren't rolling...

Memphis Music and Barbecue – Memphis Tennessee [March 12, 2017]

Fried Pickles and Memphis Barbecue at BB Kings, that is Lucille (one of them) in the background

Memphis.  Birthplace of Rock and Roll.  Memphis Blues.  Memphis Barbecue.  It sounded like a great destination for us.

The restored Orpheum Theater off of Beale

We had some business to take care of in the morning, so our first stop of the day was lunch along Beale Street.  Beale Street is known for all the music clubs, bars and restaurants celebrating the city’s rich musical traditions.  Lunch started with fried pickles.  Dana had a pulled pork barbecue sandwich and Russ had gumbo.  We listened to a Memphis musician sing a mixture of blues, and rock songs as we ate.

Display from the Rock N Soul Museum

Originally, Beale Street was where businesses that catered to Black folks in segregated Memphis were located.  White teenagers would come down to Beale to the nightclubs to listen to “black music.”  Our next stop was the Rock N Soul Museum.  Memphis music grew from a mixture of: songs sung while working in the cotton fields, black and white gospel music traditions, country music, and the blues.  A group of three pioneering music labels, Sun, Staxx and Hi integrated the music industry in the town, and nurtured the distinctive voices of music in Memphis.

Sun Records

The Sun record studios was where Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison and other early Rock and Roll artists were discovered.  The tour is lots of fun.  This was where the famed Million Dollar Quartet (Elvis, Johnny, Jerry Lee and Carl) took place.  It was actually a publicity stunt that Sam Phillips, the Sun owner, orchestrated one day when Elvis dropped in for a visit while Jerry Lee and Carl were recording.  The musicians hung around after the newspaper photographer left and jammed.  Phillips secretly recorded the session.  The recording was never released (Sun no longer owned Presley’s contract so did not have the right to record him).  The recording was found after Phillips death, negotiations ensued and it was then released.  We bought a copy.  Do you know what they sang and played?  Gospel music, Christmas music (it was December), some old country music!

BB King's

We returned to Beale Street for dinner at BB Kings while we listened to a rock band sing and play familiar rock and blues tunes.  It was a bit touristy, but the food was good and the vocalists were exceptional.  We started with fried pickles and had pulled pork barbecue.  When in Rome…   

Prospecting for Diamonds – Crater of Diamonds State Park, Murfreesboro, Arkansas [October 10-11. 2017]

Hoping for diamonds

In the Southwest corner of Arkansas is an eroded volcano.  Millenia ago, the volcano erupted shooting all sorts of volcano debris into the air, including diamonds.  Much of the debris fell back into the crater filling it up.  After its discovery in 1906, the area was mined commercially, now it is a state park where you can go to sift for diamonds yourself.  The best part?  You get to keep what you find.  The worst part?  A find is not guaranteed.  But who cares, the looking is most of the fun.  Right!

Our fancy prospecting gear in front of part of the plowed crater field

The crater is a 37-acre plowed field.  Plowing turns over the dirt to help uncover diamonds.  Most of the diamonds found are pretty tiny, the size of a match head.  They come in white, yellow and brown colors.

The washing pavilion

We rented our screens, shovel, bucket and wagon and headed out.  There are three ways to prospect for diamonds.  You can walk around looking at the ground, and when you see a sparkler, you pick it up.  Actually, this was how the diamonds were initially discovered.  We bored pretty quickly with this method, and moved on to method number two.

You swish water through the screens rinsing away the dirt

You sit on the ground, dig up a bunch of dirt and sift it through a screen.  If you are lucky, your diamond will pop out.  We mostly got pieces of jasper, a semi-precious stone the comes in lots of pretty colors.

Carefully invert the screen

At this point, we decided to attend Diamond Mining class with the park ranger.  Ah, method number three looked like it had potential.  We filled our buckets with dirt and went to the nearest washing pavilion.  The pavilions have long tanks of water.  You wash the dirt off of the stones through a screen and then a smaller screen, using a rock, tap, rotate method, that shifts the heavier diamonds to the center of the smallest screen.  Then you invert the contents of the screen onto the table, and look for your diamonds.

Your diamonds would be in the light colored gravel in the center.  This was one of our neighbor's, ours never looked this good.

We didn’t actually ever find a diamond, but we sure had fun looking.  The folks around the washing pavilion were fun to be with.  Many were families with elementary age children.  There were rock hounds who take this more seriously.  One, an 83 year old woman, was more than happy to help us look for diamonds in our gravel.  Everyone had the expectation of striking it rich.  Someone did get a tiny diamond that day (it doesn’t happen every day), but not from our group of new friends.  We had a wonderful time anyway.

A definite MUST to visit

If you are considering visiting Crater of Diamonds State Park, and like to camp, it has a campground that is superior to any state park campground we have ever visited.