My brother Dan and I have planned the trip around finding good deals on gas throughout the Memphis trip. Today, we found the Holy Grail on our last leg in Ohio. We stopped to see my brother/sister-in-law Ed & Stacy in Dayton and they showed us the way. We made it home around 8pm after 13 hours of travel and about $250 worth of gas and 1,600 miles.
My 10 year old Nephew Matthew loves playing with Libby's toys. He was very good at them by the end of the trip and had even mastered some of the basic colors, except blue, which he's always had a tough time with. As a baby, Matthew used to be deathly afraid of a tickle-me-cookie-monster toy and wouldn't go near our toy box until we would remove it. I have video footage of this very fact. I plan on pulling out that video footage and some combination of these pictures for his wedding reception someday.
(In reality, my nephew Matthew is a great kid, very smart, can quote Napoleon Dynamite verbatim and can hold his own against any of his uncles in verbal battle, and as a Black Belt, can whoop up on most of us as well).
We got on the road about 6am this morning and have about 12 hours left on our drive home. Jon and Beth were kind enough to wake up to see us off and help us load up. We're caravaning back with Dan and Kris, stopping in a couple of hours for breakfast. Cathie and the kids are out cold and will hopefully sleep for a while.
Jon, Dan and I headed down to the infamous Beale St. Downtown to hear the Blues. As the movie goes, 'No one gets out of here without singing the blues', but since we were with Dan, thankfully we did (Today is Dan's b-day, so we took the appropriate care of him).
Dan has been helping Jon with projects around the house and I've been working on Jon and Beth's computers. According to Kris, Dan isn't very good at screwing or hammering, but he's very good at sawing.
We came downtown to The Peabody to see the famous march of the ducks at 5:00. The ducks march from the fountain, through the lobby and up the elevator to their palace on the roof.
Jon and Beth have two weiner dogs that have finally been socialized enough not to bite the kids, much to Emily's delight. The girls have been playing with the dogs like their own personal puppies. The girls haven't put them down yet.
Memphis has these giant Circadia bugs, about two inches long that chirp very loudly all night. They're creepy looking things, but over time I trained this one to sit on my shoulder and do tricks.
We went downtown to the Mississippi Riverwalk, a to-scale replica of the old lady, complete with bridges and towns. It's about 100 degrees out and the kids can walk in the mock river the whole way down.
We left at 5am and we're almost into Tennessee, stopping in Kentucky for lunch. We've passed Big Bone Lick State Park which is next to the ctown of Beaverlick and south of Rabbit Hash.
I've been telling my friend Ted that he needs to do something worthwhile to make my blog and he's finally done it. Through back channel connections Ted was able to score tickets to see the taping of the Daily Show Spin-Off 'The Colbert Report' with Stephen Colbert. It's showing tonight on Comedy Central, so set your Tivos to tape.
