 When I dreamed of traveling full-time in an RV, there were just a handful of places on my bucket list, like Tronopeticles, Czech, Oregon Coast, Czech, Sedona, Czech, Moab, Czech, Czech, Czech, New Orleans, which I did last week, and Graceland. Now, why was Graceland on the short list of the places that I wanted to go see? Well, it goes back to a funny, but traumatic story from my childhood. But I finally got there with my friend Peggy to see more of this guy. Today, I'm going to show you where we stayed and what we saw. Dreaming of traveling is one thing, but actually getting there is another. Plus, there's only so much summer to go around, so I was really excited this year when I finally made it to Graceland. If you've been following my channel before this, you may have seen me go from Courtside, Arizona, to Las Cruces, New Mexico, to Big Bend, to Marfa, Texas, to Beach Camping on the Texas coast, La Fea, Louisiana, New Orleans, which was last week, and now Graceland. And by the way, if you're wondering what all those other pins are all over the map, those are the locations that I share with my patrons. Frankly, Memphis is kind of a mixed bag. It seems like a lot of the local economy revolves around Elvis tourism, as to be expected, but it's not necessarily a city that I'd want to dry camp in overnight, like at a Walmart. So my friend Peggy and I actually stayed at the Graceland RV Park, which is just adjacent to the museum. It was pretty basic, but it felt safe. It was 45 bucks a night, I think, for a non-electric site. But look how close we were. This is my truck camper, and that's the museum. So here's the story. When I was a kid, my dad loved Elvis. In fact, we were not allowed to listen to any other music in our house, except for maybe the four lettermen. If you're under 50, you can look that up. So when Elvis died in 77, a very emotional, apparently eight-year-old me was inconsolable. I cried for days. Why? Not so much because Elvis died, but because I saw news footage of the crush of people outside of Graceland being surrounded by vendors selling Elvis memorabilia. So in my eight-year-old traumatized brain, I thought there's no way Elvis would have done drugs. The only explanation must be that those vendors murdered him in order to make money. Ever since then, my sister Terry and I talked about going to Graceland together. But she never made it. Nothing is guaranteed. You have to live now. Not everybody makes it to retirement so that they can travel. I decided not to wait, and it was the best decision I ever made. Peggy and I walked right over to the museum complex where we got tickets, and I have to tell you it wasn't what I was expecting. First, the exhibits inside of the museum, which I'll show you in a little bit, were massive. I mean like Smithsonian level, huge rooms and rooms and rooms of stuff, and of course with each one you had to exit through the gift shop. But second, Graceland the house is tiny. Now I don't know what the typical size of a celebrity mansion was in the 70s, but I was really surprised when we got over there how small the rooms really were. I was also surprised that the museum is on one side of the street, but Graceland the house is on the other. So in order to get over there, you have to get on a bus and go on a tour. When you go in, they give everybody a set of headphones and cramp everybody in, and you squeeze through the rooms and see how Elvis lived at that time, and everything is supposed to be exactly the way that it was. I mean look at this kitchen, it's so 70s and so tiny. And then after that we saw the famous safari room, which was very cool. And then we went downstairs where I guess they did a lot of entertaining. And there were bars and billiard rooms in one room with a couple of couches and a bunch of TVs. And on the tour they said that celebrities would come over and everybody would pack down in there along with the big entourage and hang out, which I thought was really interesting. Inside of the house there were some really great family photos. A lot more were over in the museum. I'll show you that in a minute. And they had a little reproduction of the house that Elvis was actually born in. But then we made our way outside to the meditation garden where Elvis and his family are actually buried. Now I did not know this until I got there. Elvis was not originally buried at Graceland. They had a public viewing of his body for two days at Graceland. And that's why there were thousands of people outside trying to get into the gates for that viewing. And there was all that news footage. That was only for two days. Then they moved his body to a local cemetery and that lasted six whole weeks. They finally had to move his body and his mother's back over to Graceland because of all the security issues. The meditation garden was lovely. Everybody was really serene and quiet and respectful and walked around. There were fountains and flowers. And in a circle you could see the graves of all the family. And then Elvis. Then we got back on the bus and headed over to the museum for the rest of the day. They had exhibits of all of his stuff. His cars, his motorcycles, his gold records and more gold records. And a whole bunch of his costumes. And more costumes. And more costumes and more costumes. You get the idea. And then one of my favorite things was the exhibit of all of his movie memorabilia. There were scores of movie posters and costumes. And then we got to an exhibit that surprised me. It was a huge room full of memorabilia from Elvis' time in the military. And I saw a bunch of photos I had never seen before. And of course more costumes. But my favorite part of the museum and even the tour was an interactive exhibit where you could sit in like a little toy golf cart with a screen in front of it and pretend like you were driving around Graceland. Or you could go to these stand-up screens where you could choose one of Elvis' costumes and see yourself in it. Or you could be added onto one of Elvis' movie posters and you could even have Elvis sing to you if that's what you wanted. I did. I finally made it to Graceland which was the last place on my travel bucket list except for now I've added all of the national parks. So where to next? All I know at this point is I'm going up and over. And when I do I'll take you guys with me and of course add new places to the Patreon map. I'll see you guys next week until then. I hope you're all doing well out there. Have happy travels and be free.