Thursday, March 19, 2009

Southern States Road Trip Day 3: Huntsville and Lynchburg

I'm writing the day after because once we got home and got settled it was pretty late.

We started Wednesday in Huntsville, AL. It was really warm, I was a little disappointed in weather.com, our supposed "hottest" day was actually the coolest and our "cool" day was the warmest...go figure.

We went to the Davidson Space Center where they just opened an exhibit of the Saturn V rocket. They had a model outside, which was gigantic, and a real un-used rocket inside. It was spectacularly huge, it was hard to capture in the photos, definitely a must see! We also toured the rocket park and original museum. The rest of the space center just needs a bit of an update and it could be really cool.

Saturn V rocket, trying to get perspective on how big it was!

Models of the space shuttle Pathfinder and the Saturn V rocket

We then drove for about an hour to Lynchburg, TN to the Jack Daniel's Distillery, after an amazing lunch of McDonalds! That part of TN is really pretty and the distillery sits in a really beautiful "holler," as they call it. We took the (free) tour and learned all about the history of the area and Jack himself. The distilling process was really similar to the bourbon tours we've seen, but they run their still through 10' of charcoal which they say gives it it's smoothness. They also barrel age the whiskey, like bourbon.

4 stages of whiskey, the clear stuff is 140 proof!

The top of the 10' charcoal process, we took a whiff of this stuff (140 proof), pretty strong!!


The distillery is in Moore county which is a dry county so they were not allowed to give any tastings, but we did buy a commemorative bottle, they were only allowed to sell this.

We drove home after the whiskey tour, with a quick stop to get a stamp at a civil war battle ground in Murphreesboro, TN. It was a lot of driving but a fun day overall. Now it's back to reality until I leave for my audition at FSU with my good friend Jon, hopefully more to post then!

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Southern States Road Trip Day 2: Little Rock and Memphis

Looking back on today, it seems like we've been up forever! We started today in Little Rock, AR and went to Little Rock Central High School, one of the first schools to desegregate which caused an uprising in the city, and country for that matter. It was really eerie to think that so much violence and anger could have happened in this tiny little neighborhood. The visitors center was neat and had a ton of good information. I didn't know too many details surrounding the event so I spent a lot of time reading all of the information. I wrote down several book titles in the gift shop to check out b/c I didn't feel completely satisfied with the entire story, maybe because it was so unbelievable. The Gov of AR at the time sounds completely crazy, he even canceled school for an entire year so as not to have his schools forcibly integrated....crazy!!

Front of Little Rock Central High School (still a public HS)

Little Rock Nine sculpture outside the Arkansas State Capitol


We drove to the state capitol to take pictures of the "Little Rock Nine" statues and then headed to the Clinton Library. It is a very unique building that overlooked the river. It was a neat museum and had a lot of cool artifacts from his presidency. He had his daily itineraries for each day he was in office. It was neat to look and see what he was doing on election day in 1996 and inauguration day in 1997 and my birthday. He also had many great letters from famous people and some neat gifts from foreign leaders. Overall it was a neat museum, but would have been cool to see some stuff from his life before he was president. (I know I use the word "neat" way too much, but I'm too tired to go back and edit at this point....)

Outside the Clinton Library

We drove back to Memphis with the intention of going to the Gibson factory but the tour was sold out. We were a little bummed, but realized that all of the workers are off by that tour so we wouldn't have seen anyone making guitars anyway. We killed time (waiting for BBQ) by walking around Beale Street and visiting the Peabody Hotel.

The ducks at the Peabody were cute. We didn't stay to watch them do their walk, but we did watch them while they were in the fountain and went on the roof to see where they lived when not in the fountain. We were there an hour before their walk and at 45min before the place was starting to fill up with people, good thing we had BBQ plans or we would've been in a huge crowd after a while. The Peabody is super nice and even has Francis Scott Key's piano! I thought it was neat because it looked like the piano my family had when I was growing up.

Francis Scott Key's piano

We ate BBQ at Rendezvous BBQ and had two full slabs of ribs, yes two! It was the only meal we'd eaten today (except for our banana and cracker lunch on the road) so we were really hungry. We also ate BBQ Chicken nachos, which were really good!

Our first slab of ribs at Rendezvous BBQ

We are now in Huntsville, AL spending the night and will head home tomorrow, after seeing some space stuff, of course. I was going to leave you with a cute video of ducks, but this internet is excruciatingly slow so maybe tomorrow...

Monday, March 16, 2009

Southern States Road Trip Day 1: Memphis

It's spring break for me, so we decided to take a little road trip to get some states checked off of Ryan's list. I have all of the states we're going to already, but we're seeing some neat things so I don't mind.

We got up super early and got to Memphis around 10:30am central time. We first went to the Civil Rights Museum which is where MLK was assassinated. It was a pretty big museum with lots of new information about the history of civil rights in the U.S. The hotel portion was really interesting and haunting. I was disappointed the room was reconstructed, I had it in my mind that it was original from the day he was shot. We also got to go across the street to see the boarding house where the shooter was located.

Outside the hotel where MLK was shot

We ate lunch next, Ryan's job is to blog about the food today (it was AMAZING). We finally got to eat at the burger place Ryan had been talking about since we met. Then on to Graceland.

As we were walking in, I felt like the biggest tourist ever but was quickly sucked into the Elvis experience and ended up having a really good time. We went b/c we thought we should, but it was really cool and definitely exceeded our expectations. The house was awesome, very Elvis, and looked like it did when he lived there. We also went to the car museum, the army exhibit and went through his airplanes. He lived a very extravagant lifestyle and it was really cool to be able to see that in person. We got our usual magnets and small token Elvis items and ended up spending about 3 hours there. It's a little expensive, but very unique and fun, well worth it I think.

Outside Graceland (pronounced Grace-lund)

One of my favorite shots from inside the Mansion


We ate dinner at Gus's chicken (again Ryan will blog) but I just need to say everyone has to go there! I was literally speechless during one point during dinner b/c the chicken was THAT good, seriously.

The most amazing piece of chicken in the history of man, ever.

We drove a couple of hours to Little Rock, AR (a new state for Ryan) and are spending the night here to do LRCHS and the Clinton Library tomorrow, then back to Memphis! Day one was a success I would say. I'll post all the pics once we get back.