August 13th

Aunt Sybil made us more of her delicious biscuits for breakfast -- gotta keep working on those "summer projects". She packed the rest along with some leftover chicken for our lunch. Oh yeah.

We gathered our things, said goodbye, and were on the road by 10am. We saw the Big Texan on the way out of Amarillo and Lynne was once again denied her opportunity of eating that 72 oz steak dinner (free if eaten in 1 hour). Texas is really interesting out here... the land is so flat and the sky is so big. We passed grain silos, large fields and a really big cross. The sign next to the cross claims that it is the largest cross in the western hemisphere. Given the distribution of religions throughout the world, one must wonder why or if there is an even larger cross somewhere in the Eastern Hemisphere?

The trees gradually got larger and the land more hilly as we made our way through Oklahoma. We listened to a tape of 60's R&B that Brian and Richard made for my band The King's English. It was weird hearing the Pretty Things and the Yardbirds in that context... We stopped in a nice little town to eat our lunch. We had hoped to find a park or somehting but settled on a Sonic. We ordered cold cherry limeades and ate the food Aunt Sybil had packed for us in the car. It was just as good as the night before.

It started to rain as soon as we hit Arkansas. Some rain leaked through the doors where the car top is attached and we had to drive while holding old drink cups to catch the drips. Somehow it was more amusing than annoying. We made it nearly to Little Rock and stopped at a Motel 6.

August 14th

One of the greatest things about the South is the Waffle House. You can see all walks of life there and of couse, no place else offfers so many different ways to do your hashbrowns (smothered, covered, etc.) Cousin Van once told us that every Waffle House must have the Waffle House theme song on the juke box, and it is sung by the owner's wife! Knowing this, we of course had to eat breakfast at the WH next to our Motel 6 in Little Rock. We checked the juke box and sure enough, more than a dozen songs about hash browns and other joys of the Waffle House. Brent and Shawn are actually trying to get ahold of the recordings...

We made it to Memphis by noon. As usual, we didn't take the tour of Graceland but instead looked at the graffiti on the walls outside and went to the souvenir shops. Samples of the graffiti include: "Idaho Loves Elvis", "I ate meatloaf in your honor", "Elvis Lives 4-Ever" and "Thankyouverymuch". This week is Elvis Week (Isn't EVERY week Elvis Week here??) and there are a great many Elvis impersonators milling around. Apparently the big final contest is tonight. We were really bummed that we couldn't stick around for it but we really gotta keep moving.

We browsed the gift shops and got a few things but didn't totally score on what we wanted. Lynne has a dream of making our bathroom an Elvis Bathroom, but didn't find enough of the cheesy, cheap stuff we found 5 years ago. Apparently the whole Elvis thing has caught on to such a degree that such gems as Elvis Shampoo and soap dishes are no longer made. All the stuff with the King's likeness is, of course, licensed to Priscilla and Co. They seem to feel that their customer base has moved up a few notches and now focus on really trying to make the souvenirs look nice. Now it is mostly T-shirts, porcelain figurines, clocks, and glassware. Ashtrays were very hard to find and very few items at all depict the 70s Elvis that we all know and love. The whole thing is a travesty, a phenomenon we have named the DE-Tackification of Elvis! We decided that we would have to check flea markets and garage sales in North Carolina for some really good crappe.

As we were walking along Elvis Presley Blvd, we saw a converted school bus with anti-abortion pictures and biblical slogans painted all over it. It was pretty intense. As a strange reminder that we are back in the South. The guy driving it looked really weird too -- staring straight ahead with his head cocked to one side and his mouth hanging wide open! We wanted to get his picture but it seemed that a bolt of lightning might strike us or something. We did get a picture of the bus though.

Uncle Bob had told us about agreat BBQ place called Payne's, so we looked it up in the phone book and tried to find it. After driving around Memphis for a while with no luck, we ended up on Beale Street and had a soulful catfish lunch at the Blues City Cafe. I told Lynne some funny stories about the Selsun Blue Long Distance Voodoo Tour while we finished our lunch. We left Memphis full and happy, and were on the road by 4:00.

When we got near Nashville we tuned in to the Grand Old Opry on 650 AM. There was some pretty good stuff including Porter Wagoner, Little Jimmy Dickens, the Osbourne Brothers, and Stonewall Jackson. We stopped near Knoxville around midnight.

August 15th -- Our Last Day on the Road!

Today was our final driving day of the trip. The mountains between Knoxville and Asheville are really beautiful and old and covered in trees. We used to come up here a lot to when we lived in Atlanta to go camping or just spend the weekend at little mountain motels. We stopped in a town we know called Waynesville for lunch. Granny's Chicken Palace was closed (it was too early in the morning yet) so we ate downtown at a bakery. Then we blasted the rest of the way into Chapel Hill. We made it there by 4:30 pm. Uncle Bob, Inez, and Austin were gone at the Newport Folk Festival in Raleigh so we decided to go over to the house we are renting and unload the car there.

The end of the trip! We really can't believe it. It seems like just another stop on the road... and perhaps it is if you look at it the right way. It probably won't feel like we are actually sticking around until we spent our first night in the new place with our own stuff. That should be on Sunday. Lynne is starting school on Monday with an orientation session and then Tuesday she begins her PhD studies in Epidemiology. Robby will work on getting the house settled and start looking for a job.

Give us a couple of days and we will have pictures of our rental house and some final notes about the trip. Time to begin a new adventure!

	Leaving Amarillo. Lynne yearns for the 72 oz. steak...
	Texas!
	Big cross near Amarillo
	Memphis and Old Man River
	Graceland Graffiti!
	Wild anti-abortion bus
	Driving through Nashville
	Filling up with gas in Tennessee.