Day 19/20 in pictures

As promised a couple days ago, pictures for Memphis.

First, lunch at Tom's Bar-B-Q:

 

Note the great heaping pile of brisket, underneath chicken, underneath sauce. Delicious.

Tom Lee Park in Memphis, in the foreground. In the middle, a coal barge floating down the Mississippi. In the distance, Arkansas.

View from my cousin's 29th-story office. The island in the middle has an amphitheater for concerts and such.

Lobby of the Gibson factory. No pictures were allowed inside.

Metal gate outside the National Civil Rights Museum. Again, no pics inside.

 

Fried dill pickles and green tomatoes at Miss Polly's Soul City Cafe after a long day of museuming.

Day 21: Germantown, TN to New Orleans, LA

Outline: Germantown, TN to New Orleans, LA

Yeah...nothing much has actually happened today. The drive from the Memphis area down to New Orleans is really easy: you take 240 for a few miles on one end, 10 for a few miles on the other end, and 55-S for a whole lot of miles in the middle. Left Memphis around noon, and completely failed to find the record store that Google claimed was in the neighborhood. Drove down to New Orleans with a fuel/lunch stop in Madison, MS. Met up with my uncle, aunt, and cousin, had dinner, submitted a paper to an online preprint archive, and posted this blog entry. Wheee.

Tomorrow: New Orleans adventures

Day 19/20: Nashville, TN to Memphis, TN (x2)

Outline: Nashville, TN to Memphis, TN and environs


OK, so this is going to be another one of those "no-pictures" posts, because I forgot my camera in the car and can't be bothered to dig it out. Shame, too, because this post is mostly a story about food.

I left Nashville around noon because I spent a huge amount of time coordinating my arrival in Memphis as well as what I'd actually try to see while there. I decided that the first order of business would be to sample some famous Memphis barbecue, and that to facilitate this, breakfast would just be a snack-size bag of chips in the car. There was nothing much interesting about the drive from Nashville to Memphis. There were a ton of cops (average 1-2 police cars/mile) within a 20-30 mile radius of either city, because there was an Amber Alert about a kidnapping earlier that day; other than that, completely uneventful.

The first stop in Memphis was Tom's Bar-B-Q. I picked this place from a crowded field because every one of its reviews on Yelp was 5 stars. The strategy: two meat combo plate, beef brisket and beef ribs. The plan was foiled by a shortage of beef ribs, so I made a decision that's often very risky at BBQ restaurants: I went for the chicken, which oftentimes can be dry or flavorless. Really good move here, though. The brisket was good - nicely shredded and not dried out, with tasty sauce. The corn on the cob was just average, and the cole slaw was very good. The chicken, though, took it to the next level. I'm pretty sure it's the best BBQ chicken I've yet had - flavorful and tender all the way through. Needless to say, I was pretty well satisfied by lunch.

After lunch, I booked it across town to check out the last tour of the day at the Gibson guitar factory in downtown, where I was informed that I should just come tomorrow, as the 4p tour is sort of boring since all the workers have taken off by that point. At least they're upfront about it. This left me with a couple hours to kill before my cousin got off work, so I wandered down to Tom Lee park by the riverfront. It's a nice park, and you can see across the Mississippi River into Arkansas. After a bit of relaxation, the eating continued with some onion rings and a soda at Huey's in downtown. Good onion rings. Giant, too. After this, my cousin informed me that she was off work, and invited me up to see the view of the city from her 29th-floor office (really a much more exciting story with a picture, no?), and then we headed out for home.

After saying hello to the grandparents and dithering around for a while (read: starting laundry and watching TV), it was time for actual dinner (note: third meal in 5 hours). We went out to a Chinese restaurant. Too much food was ordered. Most of it was eaten.

My phone decided to have a hissy fit overnight and drain its battery, so I never got my alarm in the morning. I woke up at 10:30 and was treated to a massive breakfast by my grandmother. It would have been rude to decline, of course, so I didn't get out the door till noon.

First stop was the Gibson factory. This time I actually made it onto the tour, which was pretty interesting - they take you through all the steps in the construction of a semi-hollow electric guitar. Unfortunately, they don't allow photographs. After this, I went to the National Civil Rights Museum, at the Lorraine Motel - the site of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination. Unfortunately, they also don't allow pictures, but I was able to spend 3 hours and not even notice it. It's a very, very well done exhibit.

After the NCRM, it was time for another snack. This time, I went to Miss Polly's Soul Food Cafe, on Beale St - again on the power of an online recommendation, I picked up the combination fried dill pickle/green tomato basket. I don't even like pickles, and these were fantastic. The tomatoes were even better. I guess things really are better fried. Snacktime past, I went over to the house of my other set of cousins in Memphis, where we basically killed time playing video games until dinner - this time, Italian. After dinner, we came home, and I stayed up revising a paper till 2 or 3 in the morning. Hurrah.

Tomorrow: Germantown, TN to New Orleans, LA

Day 19/20: Tomorrow, I guess?

Sorry - I was planning to combine the last two days into one post, today, but I've just spent all night revising a paper for submission. Can't quite dodge grad school even on the road. Tomorrow, I guess.

Day 18: Pigeon Forge, TN to Nashville, TN

Outline: Pigeon Forge, TN -> Great Smoky Mountains Natl Park (Cades Cove) -> Nashville, TN

Slept in this morning since the days have been long and I haven't gotten enough sleep. Spent about a half hour tracking down a hotel for the evening (read a long succession of reviews of cheap Nashville hotels mentioning crime/prostitutes/strange diseases...) before finding and booking one. I also bought a ticket for the show tonight at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville (of which more later). I was told to arrive around 6; leaving the hotel at 11:30, I figured I had a few hours to kill before the 3 - 3.5 hour drive to Nashville, so I headed back into Smoky Mountains NP.

The ranger yesterday had recommended the Cades Cove loop drive to me yesterday, but warned that it takes a couple hours, so I passed on it (since the sun would have set on me). Sounded like the perfect thing to check out today. The Cades Cove road runs for 28 miles inside the park, much of the way alongside a very nice creek:

I spent much of this part of the drive sitting behind a few cars that were moving at a slow, but reasonable pace; it was a good opportunity to sit back and see the sights. After the 28 miles of windy driving, the road terminates in a picnic ground, campground, and "scenic loop road", which takes you in an 11-mile loop around a meadow, with some sights along the way (log cabins, etc). This road was scenic and nice...for about 10 minutes. After that, I got caught in a line of cars marching along at around 5-10 mph; low enough that I was hitting idle speed in 1st gear. My one great complaint about the park is that people do not understand the signs indicating "slower cars use turnoffs" and "do not stop in the middle of the road". I cut the loop short to about 6 miles using a road through the middle, but still ended up trapped in a line of cars (and one school bus) about 30-long. This small loop excursion had eaten up an hour on its own! Since I was now running short on time, Murphy's Law guaranteed that I would get stuck behind more slow-moving cars on the Cades Cove road, where I saw people taking pictures out the window for miles at a time, never once using a turnoff to let the line of cars behind them pass.

When I finally got back out to Pigeon Forge, it was already 2:30, so I had time enough just to get gas and some sandwiches at Burger King before hitting the road directly for the Opry. And then, about an hour in, I was saved by the following sign: "Now Entering Central Time Zone." I'd completely forgotten about the time zone change, and had a full extra hour to work with, making a more relaxed schedule. After an uneventful (except for more slow cars, this time parked in the left lane, getting passed by semis on the right), I checked into my hotel in Nashville and headed out to the Grand Ole Opry.

The Grand Ole Opry (or rather, the broadcast of the live show) is the longest running radio show in the US and has featured many of the biggest names in country music. In other words, the style isn't the stuff I usually listen to. Regardless, I figured it was probably the most quintessentially-Nashville thing I could do (and it's hard to make live music bad), so I decided to check it out:

The Opry show featured a variety of performers, ranging from Western (cowboy-type music), to bluegrass, to different styles of country.

(Western band "Riders in the Sky". They were on the Toy Story soundtracks!)

(Bluegrass band the Grascals)

(Female country trio Point of Grace)

(Country Music Hall of Fame member "Little" Jimmy Dickens. He's not much taller than the guitar he's playing.)

(Charlie Daniels and the eponymous Band)

Even though it's not my usual brand of music, I had a great time at the Opry show. I wouldn't call all the performers my favorites, but most of them were pretty great, and I'd definitely see it again. Also, the live performance of "Devil Went Down to Georgia" at the end was awesome.

Tomorrow: Nashville, TN to Memphis, TN

Day 17: Atlanta, GA to Pigeon Forge, TN

Outline: Atlanta, GA to Great Smoky Mountains NP to Pigeon Forge, TN

This morning started out like every other one. Up at 10, out the door just around 11 or 1130, and right onto the road planned out. First on the agenda was the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL, which has a large US space museum attached to it. Who wouldn't want to see a Saturn V? From there, I continued on to Nashville.

Except that every sentence in that last paragraph was a complete lie. The morning actually started around 8, and we were out the door by 9 to grab breakfast. After that, I dropped Aliyya off to her classes and hit the road...for Jiffy Lube, to get a somewhat-overdue oil change. From there, I put in the address for the space museum into the GPS, and decided the northern route (via Chattanooga, TN) looked more interesting than the southern (through Birmingham, AL), and picked that.

That's where everything went off-plan, and wonderfully so. Upon getting into Chattanooga, I realized that I could go about 150 miles west to see spaceships, or 150 miles northeast to see scenery - specifically, Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Given that I was just at the Air and Space Museum a few days ago, and my last attempt to see this particular range of mountains was foiled by weather (see the post complaining about rain a couple days ago), it wasn't a hard decision. I just kept going on I-75 N, and eventually switched off to 40-E towards Knoxville. Traffic was minimal, scenery was great, life was good.

Everything came crashing to a halt (not literally, calm down) once I got off 40 onto TN-66. First of all, all of a sudden there was a huge amount of traffic heading off the highway. To make matters worse, this traffic passed through Pigeon Forge, TN. It's very clear that the main industry in Pigeon Forge is tourism, because the main strip (66) is absolutely lousy with tourist traps of every variety. That in itself isn't bad - what's annoying is the extent to which they all try to outdo each other in garishness to try to suck you in. It was sort of reminiscent of the huge amount of commercial development around Niagara Falls, and that's not a good thing. It wasn't a good omen for the approach to the park. The next town on the way in, Gatlinburg, also had a main street with lots of tourist attractions, but at least here they've done a good job trying to make them blend in, not blow out your eyes. The traffic was still bad, though.

All the sins of the outside towns were forgiven upon getting into the park, however. As befits a national park, Great Smoky Mountains is beautiful (and on a Monday afternoon, not super crowded). The following video will give you some idea of the contrast. The first town you'll see is the super-built-up Pigeon Forge; after a short woody segment, you'll see Gatlinburg; after that, you enter the park:




At the recommendation of one of the rangers at the visitor center, the first place I went was the lookout point at Newfound Gap. This lookout point is along the ridge of the Smoky Mountains, and lies on the Tennessee-North Carolina border, which means that everyone is obligated to take a picture with one leg on either side of the border:


The views from the lookout (and the road approaching the lookout) aren't too shabby either:




The Newfound Gap lookout is also a connection point to the Appalachian Trail, an unbroken footpath that runs over 2000 miles from Maine down into the South:


I hiked about 0.1% of the total length, and then decided to move on to another lookout point recommended in a guidebook. Clingman's Dome is the highest point in the park, and the third-highest point in all of the eastern United States, so it offers a great view of the park. By the time I got there around 5:45 or 6, the temperature had already dropped to around 40-45 degrees, so I packed up a couple extra layers and took on the half-mile uphill climb to get to the lookout post at the top of Clingman's. Though it's a bit of a climb (especially with the 6,000+ ft altitude), there's no doubt that the view from up there is great:



I figured as long as I was there so late, I might as well wait for sunset and see how everything looked; there was one other photographer already there with the same idea. What I don't think anyone up there counted on was just how cold it would get. The temperature was already in the low 40s, and at the high altitude, winds were constantly gusting past us from all directions - giving a windchill that was certainly subfreezing. Worth it, though:




I stopped taking pictures when I was fumbling with the camera too much - it's hard to manipulate a shutter when you can't feel your fingers. Put down for the night in a Pigeon Forge hotel (the one nice thing about ridiculous tourist traps is that the oversupply of hotel rooms on a down day = cheap rates).

Tomorrow: Pigeon Forge, TN to Nashville, TN (forreal this time?)

Day 16: Charlotte, NC to Atlanta, GA

Outline: Charlotte, NC to Atlanta, GA

Didn't get moving till 11. What else is new?

I did, however, make excellent time, getting down to Atlanta in a bit over 3 hours (the spirit of 85 south lives on, whether a California highway or a federal interstate). The first stop was the home of my Rimtu Mama and Rena Mami.

Aside: For those of you not in the know, Mama/Mami are generic terms in Bangla for a male/female relative one generation older than yourself, related through your mother; in this case, we're talking about my mother's cousin, which in the perfectly useless English formal system, would be my first cousin once removed.

In any case, I hadn't seen Rimtu Mama and his family in years, so it was nice to catch up with them over some tea and pastries. I also got to meet the kids (another set of second cousins, hooray!), who I don't think I had seen before. Somehow I neglected to take pictures of the kids, so you all will have to content yourself with a picture of the adults:

After that I headed off to Emory to visit my cousin Aliyya. As the gracious host, the first thing she did was take me on a tour of the Emory main campus. It's laid out in sort of a strange fashion, with the Emory hospital right in the center of campus, rather than at the outside or on a separate campus entirely, as with many other schools. It's interestingly morbid, then, that Emory's unofficial mascot is a skeleton named Dooley. There's a pretty cool statue of him near the main quad:

Very dashing. After concluding the campus tour, we went out to get a pre-dinner snack since I hadn't had any real lunch (though I did have a late breakfast). We headed to a place called Flip Burger Boutique, an establishment featuring hyper-modern decor,  fancy burgers....and milkshakes made with liquid nitrogen. Since neither of us had been there before, we sampled various things on the menu. Our waiter informed us that the nutella + burnt marshmallow and krispy kreme milkshakes were the most popular, so those were the first order. The first one was excellent indeed. The second one blew my mind; I wasn't quite sure what a krispy kreme milkshake would be - but it ended up tasting just like eating a krispy kreme donut (except cold and milkshakey). Neither of us actually had the ability to finish the KK shake (too full), but it was amazing that such a thing could even be done.

 

(Aliyya admires the nutella and krispy kreme shakes)

The main courses were a pair of burgers and a side of fried okra. This being the south, I ordered the "Southern" burger - a country-fried patty with pickles, pimiento cheddar, and green tomato ketchup. The burger was quite good, and the okra was excellent (Aliyya's tuna burger received mixed reviews). 

 

(The Southern burger)

 

(The tuna burger and okra)

After not-quite-dinner, we continued with the tour of Atlanta, driving by the Georgia Aquarium, the Coke Experience, and the CNN Center before coming in to the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site:

 

 

Unfortunately, the visitor center and exhibit were already closed by the time we got there, so we walked around seeing the various sights at the site, including the burial place of both Dr. King and his wife, a statue of Gandhi, and the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr. King was preacher:

 

Finally, we headed back to Emory and, after a short break, to dinner proper, at a Turkish restaurant named Cafe Istanbul. Quick review: the service was so slow as to be almost nonexistent, but the food was pretty good, and we got to see a dance-off between a belly dancer and one of the customers - at 10pm on a Sunday evening. Hotlanta indeed.

Tomorrow: Atlanta, GA to Nashville, TN (via Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL)