nocureforgravity

No trip to Memphis should be complete without at least stopping by the former Lorraine Motel, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed on April 4, 1968.

The motel is now the National Civil Rights Museum, which opened in 1991.

We walked there from our hotel first thing in the morning, and paused to reflect on the outside of the building. Then we went inside from the brutal heat and bought our museum tickets.

There’s a 30-minute film when you first enter, which we decided to skip. To the left of the movie theater is an exhibit room that primarily focuses on the history of the motel, and the history of the museum. If we had known how much else there was to see, we wouldn’t have spent so much time in this room.

We finally moseyed down to the right of the theater entrance, and we found that the National Civil Rights Museum’s exhibits span pretty much the history of America, and covers the history of African Americans’ struggle for civil rights in great detail. There’s a lot of great information, and very interesting displays. We found ourselves a bit rushed toward the end, which was very unfortunate.

One of the last exhibit rooms is a restoration of the actual room in which MLK was staying when he was shot. It is a worthwhile experience.

There are additional exhibit spaces across the street. It’s too bad that we missed out on seeing those, because it seems they focus on the assassination itself, James Earl Ray, the investigation, etc.

It would be worth planning to spend about three hours here, but unfortunately we only had an hour and a half.

Not much to share about today… we broke camp early in the morning after a quick breakfast, then drove south out of Kentucky, down I-65 into Tennessee.

Outside of Nashville we stopped in the suburbs to do some shopping (birthday gifts for our niece Madison) and have lunch. Suburbs are so similar almost anywhere you go in this country… Barnes & Noble, Children’s Place, Red Robin… it could have been in Maryland, Chicagoland, California, or anywhere else.

Then we hauled across Tennessee on I-40 from Nashville to Memphis, our planned destination.

Courtesy of my hotels.com rewards, we’re staying at a rather swanky hotel in downtown Memphis called The Madison Hotel. Before dinner, we grabbed drinks at the bar and took them up to the rooftop patio, where we admired the sunset over the Mississippi River.

We had dinner at Central BBQ with a GU alum friend. It was pretty tasty, but we’ve been informed that Rendezvous is “infinity times better”, so we’ll have to try that tomorrow.

A quick word about our campsite in Kentucky. We camped at the Houchin Ferry Campground, which is one of three campgrounds belonging to the NPS at Mammoth Cave National Park.

This campground is pleasantly small – only 12 sites, and all for tent / car camping (the sites are way too small for RVs). It’s right on the banks of the Green River, next to a little ferry that takes cars across the river during set hours of the day. There aren’t many amenities – just porta-potties and a water spigot – but it’s a nice spot, and it’s quiet.

The campsites are first-come, first-serve, and we were pleased to show up late morning on a Monday to find that we had our pick of the dozen. We selected one, set up our tent near the river, and paid the $12 for the site.

When we returned in the evening, a group of 10 or so people had taken over a few spots at the end of the campground, and there was another couple in addition to the group. Not too bad.

It was a very warm night. In the morning before dawn there was an amazing fog that made the whole place look surreal and beautiful. After the sun came up, it didn’t take long for things to really heat up. We were glad that we woke up and broke camp early.

I really recommend the Houchin Ferry Campground to anyone camping in this part of Kentucky, even aside from a visit to Mammoth Cave itself. There’s plenty of hiking and fishing in this area as well.

The feature for Day 2 of our road trip was Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky.

We arrived mid-day, set up camp, ate a quick lunch, and headed to the Visitor Center to check out the tour options.

Mammoth Cave has over 390 miles of cave – the longest known cave system in the world – so there are numerous tours for visitors to enjoy. These tours still only cover about 12 miles of the caves.

We bought tickets for the Historical Tour as well as the Frozen Niagara tour. We had a bit of a wait before our first tour, though, so we caught half of an above-ground ranger talk about the pivotal role that enslaved persons played in the cave’s history. It was very interesting and informative, and turned out to be good background for the Historical Tour.

Mammoth Cave is like the Grand Canyon of caves. It’s just really huge. As we learned on our tours, there really aren’t a lot of cool formations (stalactites, stalagmites, draperies, etc), except in one small section of the cave. But the history is pretty interesting – from gypsum mining by early Native Americans, to saltpeter mining during the War of 1812, to the tourist industry starting after that war ended.

Plus, it’s a pretty neat place for a hike. Especially when it’s 94 degrees on the surface, and nobody in their right mind should be hiking. It’s always a cool 54 degrees inside the cave, so there’s little risk for heat stroke.

The Historical Tour was about 2 hours and 20 minutes long. The tour group was ridiculously huge, and full of families with small children. That made it a little less fun. It’s challenging enough to walk through a cave – taking care to simultaneously refrain from hitting your head and from tripping or slipping on the rough yet slippery ground – without also having to be sure not to run over a munchkin. The most unfortunate part was toward the end when the park ranger shut off the lights to give everyone a sense of just how dark it is, and also tried to get the crowd to be completely silent for just 5 seconds to hear cave silence. That didn’t work out so well.

But the tour was still really cool, and we even made it through the sections called “Fat Man’s Misery” and “Tall Man’s Misery”.

We were really glad that we did the Frozen Niagara tour after that. This featured the section of the cave that actually does have formations, so we got to see a few cool things. Plus the group was MUCH smaller, so we did have our darkness-and-silence experience.

Overall, we were really glad we finally got a chance to visit Mammoth Cave National Park. If I were to recommend only ONE cave experience, I would suggest Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico over this one. But, this was still worth doing.

After saying our farewells in Champaign-Urbana and ensuring that our house was clean enough to pass the landlady’s inspection, we headed east.

Yes, you read that right. We’re moving to San Francisco. Why wouldn’t we go to Indianapolis first?

Our first planned adventure is Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, but we didn’t want to drive 5-6 hours and get there late at night. We realized we’d never really spent time in Indy, so we thought we’d give that a try while it was still in our neighborhood.

We checked into La Quinta Inn in Downtown Indy (not in Walla Walla Washington, as Birbiglia fans will note), then headed to the AMC to see the final Harry Potter movie. Great movie-going experience: nice theater, satisfying film, not freezing cold despite the brutally hot exterior temps.

We had a late dinner at Scotty’s Brewhouse in downtown Indianapolis. This is the only restaurant we’d ever been to in downtown Indy (on a previous day trip). Rather than branch out, we decided to go with known quantity. They have a fun menu, and a nice outside dining area.

Today was the Brickyard 400, which means it was one of the craziest days of the year in Indy. The staff at Scotty’s were just beat from all the large groups of people and numerous customers who had been drinking since 9 in the morning. Somehow our appetizer didn’t make it out until after our entrees, but they were nice enough to comp it for us.

What I really like about Scotty’s – aside from the usual considerations – is that they’re a local chain, and make a point to be environmentally friendly. If you’re ever in downtown Indy and just want a basic but nice sports bar, do check it out.