Memphis and Beyond!

This is how the day began as we drove to Memphis, with Max zonked out from too many cousins and puppies to play with and a ton of time on the trampoline.

We were on our way to Sun Studios in downtown Memphis.  We had to wake Max up but he was happy that we did when he got to see where Johnny Cash recorded songs.  When Max was about 2 and a half years old he did a pretty killer rendition of Ring of Fire.  It even had a cool little dance that went with it.  He is quite the Johnny Cash fan.

We took the tour of the studio and it was really worth it!  A well versed tour guide, some sound bites, and photo ops made the trip a memorable one.  As you can see!

Elvis, Jerry Lee, Carl and Johnny use this mic

Paul was having fun!

U2 left their drums after a session

Max decided that he has to go back and record songs.  It only costs $100 an hour to use the studio that the Million Dollar Quartet played in.  Next we were off to Interstate BBQ to get our fix!  As we parked Papa Neely was pulling up and while we were eating he strolled the joint saying hello to various people.  I will tell you that the brisket and ribs were deadly!!  My hands were far too BBQy to be taking pictures so you will just have to imagine.  Is your mouth watering?  Mine is.

We spent one more night with my cousins and then we said goodbye and see ya soon and we were on the road again.  This day would find us headed to Shawnee National Forest, one of my most favorite places on earth.  Cool rock formations, landscape to die for, and great campgrounds to hang out at.  As we got close to Shawnee we were forced to make a ig decision.  It was 98 degrees and freaky humid outside, do we camp in this kind of heat or do we improvise and maybe curtail the potential misery of uncomfortable camping.  You know what we did!  We opted for a hotel stay with a pool for extra fun.  We found a little Best Western in Southern Illinois and happened to be one family of one in the place.  We jumped in our suits and headed for our private pool, where Max worked hard at the whole swimming thing.  Max is pretty good about the water but he still has the small issue of drowning.  Now don't get me wrong, he can swim, kinda.  What he does is more like sinking slowly enough that it resembles short bursts of swimming.  Anyway, he was working it and at last he actually swam.  We have a video to show everyone and I don't want you to worry that he looks like he is an alligator, what with the swimming with only his eyeballs above the water line, he was persistent about not drowning.  I will also let you know that no water was harmed in the making of this video, although it did get slapped around a bit.

Please always remember and don't ever forget:

"Well, me don't swim too tough so me don't go in the water too deep."  ~Bob Marley