Millington TN Naval Base & the King 10/4/16

I gotta say before we made our stop for the night I kept seeing signs for Loretta Lynn's Ranch. I quickly Googled it & saw that it was on our way, but this wasn't her home that she refers to in her song “Coal Miner's Daughter”. This ranch in Hurricane Mills, outside of Nashville, is where they have a replica of her childhood home, concerts, gift shop, restaurant, motocross races & more. Apparently when she bought the land to build her home way back when, she actually bought the whole town. They also have an rv park, but reviews were iffy. I'm putting in my memory bank for next time. I do for sure want to go to her childhood home, which is East of Lexington, KY & just so happens to be somewhat on our way out of town after Breyerfest in July 2017. All the reviews say it's Loretta's brother who does the tours for $5 & it's not your typical touristy spot, which I like. I also read that it's hard to find so you have to go to the little country store & ask about it & they'll call Loretta's brother to meet you out there. It's literally a one on one tour & he tells you all kinds of stories from their childhood. That would be awesome so it's definitely on my list for next summer.

As for our stop over, we decided to pop a squat at a naval base famcamp. Another huge savings since we only pay $20 a night & you can't beat that. We had no idea it would be so nice here! We were surrounded by beautiful trees & spacious sites with concrete slabs. The roads within the camp were nice & smooth so the girls could ride their bikes. Dalton still hasn't learned how to ride his bike without training wheels & he's not very motivated to learn. No biggie he just runs along side & burns energy, which is a win win for this mama. Emry on the other hand is riding as if she's been riding for years. She scares me with her speed & no fear attitude. She makes my heart race, in a not so good way. I have these visions of her 10 years from now doing bike tricks & stunts. Gah! I can't watch!! There was no playground within the rv park, but there was one across the way, but a bit far of a walk. The laundry room/bathhouse was one of the nicer ones we've seen so far and get this. FREE LAUNDRY! Awesome & it came in handy since I had a sick child then a sick hubby. One puking & the other sweating out their fever. Yeah lots of laundry, but I got it all done. It was so nice at this place that we decided to stay an extra day & as a result we got to go see a couple touristy sites.

Our first touristy stop was the ginormous Bass Pro pyramid shop in Memphis. You know when you've seen one Bass Pro or Cabela's you've been them all, but this one was impressive. It reminded me of being at the Luxor in Las Vegas. After looking at all the fish & stuffed animals, I found one of those nifty air lounge chairs that are floating around on facebook. You know the one that they demonstrate how “easy” it is to fill with air then seal it & sit? Yeah tried it & it's not so easy. I felt somewhat foolish running up & down the aisle in the store trying to get air into the darn thing then finally figured out I had to really scrunch the edges in order to make the fabric stiff. Hard to describe, but I got it to work then I sat in it. Oh boy talk about looking foolish now. My butt was on the ground & trying to get back out of the darn thing was making me work up a sweat. Seriously I must have been doing something wrong. My son sat in it & practically sunk in the middle (there are 2 sides to it). He looked like he was getting eaten by the thing. I decided it wasn't worth the $79 & moved on….well after I forced it back into the bag. I'll stick to lounge chairs thank you very much.

Our next stop was of course, Graceland to see The King of Rock n Roll. I was here once before back in the 1996-1998 time frame, but didn't do a tour. Seems like there's even more stuff around that area then my last trip. I tried to picture what it looked like 40+ yrs ago without all the touristy stuff. I'm sure it was much more peaceful. We decided not to do a tour because the kids wouldn't appreciate it the way we would & why pay for them to whine about it when we can get that for free. It was pretty warm out so we took some pics then wrote our names on the wall that surrounds the front of Graceland and called it a day. One day we'll go back & finally do a tour. I was reading online that NO ONE goes upstairs in Graceland. That's off limits to tourists & only for family and a few close friends. They don't want the bathroom to become the focus of the tour & I can understand that. I blew a kiss to Elvis then said good bye. We rounded up our gang to head back to our lovely campground so we could leave in the morning. Next stop, Kentucky. I'm more than ready to get to work at Amazon!