Mid-South Adventure Tour (Nashville, Memphis, Bentonville)- October 6-14, 2022.

NASHVILLE

After traveling the world, we figured it was time to see more of the United States. We thought that two years ago, but as with so many events and plans in a Covid environment, we had to postpone our trip to this year. Our fellow travelers are Marty & Jeffrey Cokin and Susan Cullman. When we postponed last year because Nashville had terrible Covid protocols, the five of us did Washington DC which was a lot of fun. So we are veteran co-travelers.

Arriving from points north and south, the northern contingent (Susan, Arty, Betsey) picked up a minivan at the airport in Nashville and promptly made the wrong turn. Our Waze guidance was a bit disjointed, but we finally made it to the Fairlane Hotel which had been recommended by friends. To be honest we were all a bit let down by this supposed top-shelf boutique hotel which seems like a faded daisy. However, the staff was very helpful in our itinerary planning, and after a dinner at Adele’s (highly touted and good, not great) we settled in for the night.

DISASTER! Jeffrey who had cold symptoms on arrival reported the next morning that he had Covid. He had worn a mask in the car, but we had dinner together the night before, and so we are all a bit jumpy. Very sadly for the Cokins (and for us) they have got to stay in their hotel room in Nashville until Sunday when Jeffrey will no longer be contagious and can fly home. They cancelled the rest of the trip because even though probably not contagious, he still feels like shit. So we had to call audibles and move on.

The three survivors kept our appointment for the Nash Trash tour. It’s a pink bus tour of the city led by Ben, a comedian who actually was pretty funny. We got to drive by the key sights and neighborhoods. Nashville seems to be booming. It certainly is filled with tourists and bars and bars and drinkers and drinkers. All very festive. This is the bachelorette capital of the world with thousands of them coming every year for their last fling before marrying one of them off. Apparently they go wild and there’s a lot of love/hate among the locals. Nash Trash doesn’t allow them on their tours.

Afterwards we headed to Printers Alley near our hotel, which is lined with bars, and went to the recommended Bourbon Street bar for Po Boy sandwiches, wings, beer and Bloody Marys. The music was pretty good too. There is music everywhere 24 hours a day in this town.I spent the rest of the afternoon switching our minivan for a smaller vehicle since we‘re down to the hard-core three.

The treat of the day was the Grand Ol Opry. We drove out to Gaylord’s Opryland Hotel which is a mammoth glass-enclosed city of gardens, waterfalls, 2800 hotel rooms, and many restaurants. They also valet park your car and shuttle you to the Opry House, so that was our strategy. We had a quick but delicious dinner at Old Hickory Steak House which is housed in a replica of the Hermitage, ”Old Hickory” Andrew Jackson’s house (under the glass roof mind you) and shuttled to the Opry.

It was a real hoot. Celebrating their 97th birthday and the oldest live music radio show in the world, we, along with 4,000 others in the audience, stomped our feet to a litany of country western names we never heard of but enjoyed immensely, including an incredible harmonica player named Charlie McCoy. It was a really fun show albeit permeated with joyful references to being saved by Jesus.

Next morning we had breakfast at Pucketts, a local eatery that was quite good—eggs, biscuits, and grits (one of my favorites). Then it was off to the Ryman Audiorium. Originally built as a Gospel Tabernacle to redeem the sinners of Nashville in the 1880’s, it quickly became the venue for music and entertainment in the city. Sarah Bernhardt, Bob Hope, John Phillip Sousa, Houdini, and Theodore Roosevelt among others graced its stage, and it became the home of the Grand Ol Opry in 1943 until 1974. It felt good to sit in their pews for a bit. Loretta Lynne, country royalty, had just passed away and their were tributes in town.

From there we headed to Broadway which is where the music madness is headquartered. Bar after Bar with live music blaring out to the gutter in a raucous cacophony, Thousands of tourists including scores of bachelorettes dancing in the street or on open-air buses plying the avenue. We stopped into the Robert’s Western bar which had been recommended and enjoyed a beer (at 10:30 in the morning!) and the music. Good to take in short doses. We Ubered to an area called 12th South which had been highly touted for its ambience, boutiques etc. It was a disappointment.

We topped the day off with dinner at Martin’s barbecue. Very tasty ribs and brisket and home made potato Chips. The pecan pie was good as well.

GRACELAND

We left Nashville early for the three hour drive to Graceland, outside of Memphis. It was 75mph highway all the way and the landscape was pretty much dense trees, evergreens and late fall color deciduous trees. We arrived early at Graceland and Susan stumbled on the curb, and Betsey and I could see ourselves heading on to Bentonville alone. Fortunately, Susan was a trooper and rallied. Graceland turned out to be less kitsch and more interesting than all of us originally surmised. It’s quite an operation that must generate tens of millions for the Presley estate, but it’s almost Disney-like in its efficient movement of crowds. We saw a video history and then were able to secure a wheelchair at the Mansion itself for me to push Susan through the house and around the nearby grounds. The house itself is tasteful on the exterior, not huge, and inside is decorated in various degree of Elvis. He was very involved in the decor apparently and redid the rooms several times. I believe this is the way it was when he died in 1977.

Right outside the house is a meditation area where the graves of Elvis, his parents, and grandmother are located very near to the swimming pool. Interesting. There are also a number of pavilions that house Elvis’ cars, some quite awesome (e.g. ’66 sky blue Cadillac Eldorado convertible, two Rollls Royces, and two Mercedes limos.) Lots of gold records and do dads, and a room with three levels of Elvis outfits. Really pretty stunning. Of particular interest to me was the Presidential Medal of Freedom which Donald Trump awarded to Elvis posthumously. We had never seen the medal up close. Have to say we all thought it was a bit garish and wondered if this was just Donald Trump’s version of the medal. Turns out the medals are the same from all Presidents. Having spent over three hours absorbing Elvis, we finally headed into Memphis and the James Lee Houses B&B to chill before dinner.

MEMPHIS

Our first order of business in Memphis was to reconnect at dinner with Dr. Ellis Neufeld, my first cousin, once removed. Ellis is the Clinical Director at St Jude Hospital. We picked him up at his home in what they call “mid-town.” His wife was out of town. We headed to Germantown and a barbecue joint called the Commissary which his wife had recommended. Brisket was the supposed thing to order. In reality it wasn’t nearly as good as our brisket dinner the night before in Nashville.In fact it was dry and tasteless. As you can tell, we are on a barbecue tasting tour. But we had lots of good conversation about the family roots and also about St Jude which really was started by Danny Thomas and really doesn’t charge their patients anything for treatment and care, including providing family’s with room and board if need be. It was an illuminating evening.

We had a chock full day on Columbus (Indigenous People’s ) Day. Our first impressions of downtown Memphis was pretty glum. No people. So many empty storefronts. And yet, some very cool old architecturally interesting buildings, a real trolly line, and a few good venues. The National Civil Rights Museum which is right there is so impressive. It’s built around the Lorraine Motel where Dr Martin Luther King, Jr was assassinated. It tells the story of African American history, from African importation to the day of King’s death. Very moving photos, videos, and memorabilia that chilled us to remember man’s inhumanity to man and ponder that this still goes on today, albeit more subtly. Then you cross the street to the building from which the shot was fired that killed King and you can look out the window from which the assassin fired his gun. The rest of the exhibit tells the story of the investigation and outcome.

We had a good lunch outdoors at the Majestic, a former movie theater and then walked to the Cotton Museum at the old Cotton Exchange building. Of minor interest in learning the history of cotton. In Memphis cotton was King. It’s where all the old money came from, including from the riverboats that carried the cotton to other markets. Our B&B was the home of a nouveau riche riverboat mogul. Incidentally, Beale Street, Memphis' answer to

Nashville's Broadway is a pitiably sad attempt.

Our last stop of the day was Sun Studios where rock ‘n roll was born. True. We hear the story of Bob Phillips who started the recording studio to capture the wonderful blues singers who were never recorded. Then came Elvis, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis (The Million Dollar Quartet) who all got their starts there, among many others. Very nostalgic tour and the studio continues to record C&W and other performers.

Dinner was at a place called Paulette’s on an island by the Mississippi, but what was special was driving to it and seeing this very interesting bridge over the river with a loop de loop design that was all lit up and kept changing colors and doing movements. It was like a Bellagio fountain show but on a bridge infrastructure. Memphis is trying.

BENTONVILLE

We got off to an early start from Memphis for what was going to be a five hour drive; however, we realized we were going through Little Rock and called an audible to visit the Clinton Presidential Library (or Center as they call it). A long rectangular glass box on the Arkansas River, the Center does a very good job of depicting the early years of the Clintons up until his presidency. As with many Presidential libraries it has a replica of the Oval Office and the presidential limo. We thought they did a less effective job depicting his presidency. There were many dense exhibits with lots of written dialogue and occasional videos. There is also a short film narrated by Clinton himself which was pretty effective.

We had a very good lunch at the Center out on the terrace and then made the remaining three hour drive to Bentonville. We checked into the 21C Hotel which is very close by the Museum and is an art gallery in and of itself and is very comfortable. We had dinner at the hotel which was quite good although our server was very weird.

Next morning I did something I sorely needed.I exercised! The gym in the hotel has Pelotons and I jumped on, and although I didn’t nearly work off the scones, muffins, cornbread, brisket etc etc., I felt less guilty afterwards. Then we embarked on a major day of art and architecture. Crystal Bridges Museum is well worth the trip. Nestled in a valley on the former 120 acre estate of Alice Walton, the museum is designed in a series of pavilions and bridges over spring fed ponds.

The art is very eclectic—from early American to modern and contemporary art plus rare original copies of the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and the Articles of Confederation. We spent five hours including lunch there.

After an early dinner we returned to the Museum grounds for a nighttime mile walk through a “Listening Forest.” This was a series of sound and light exhibits, some pretty bizarre, that were intermixed through the forest. One in particular amused us—a vast field of LED light bulbs that react in intensity to your pulse when you put your hand under a sensor. Wild.

Our last full day in Bentonville was a return to Crystal Bridges to see what we hadn’t yet seen. You really can’t experience the museum in just one day. We did a self guided tour of a Frank Lloyd Wright house that was dismantled from its original New Jersey site and reconstructed in a similar setting here. It was the kind of house you can admire but not want to live there.

After lunch and a little more viewing, we headed back to our hotel to chill before dinner. Dinner at Petit Bistro was mixed. Betsey and Susan really enjoyed their steak; me not as much. The chocolate bread pudding was neither a pudding nor good. Betsey’s Poire belle Helene fared much better.

Speaking of food, I would say that our dining experiences were on the whole good but not great. The barbecue in Nashville was great but we opted not to visit Wright's in Bentonville which we later learned is the best around. Bummer. I loved all the grits varieties but my fellow travelers were not interested. The biggest surprise--Southern Fried Chicken was not on the menu in any of the restaurants we visited. (Betsey and I brought in fried chicken from Shop Rite when we got home.) The south seems to do biscuits, scones, muffins best as my much bigger waistline attests.

But I digress. Our last stop before flying home was to the home of Bob and Becca Alexander, friends of Susan's sister where she and Bob sit on the Board of the American Folk Art Museum in NYC. They have built a stunning prairie style home outside of Bentonville, designed to house their exquisite collection of American Folk Art. The house and the collection were jaw-dropping and a fitting finale to our mid-South Adventure tour.