Little Feat got it wrong.  Or at least wrong-ish.  Or maybe they wrote “Dixie Chicken” after a night of intense partying.  They were known for partying.  Whatever.  There is no Commodore Hotel in Memphis.  There is good food, especially BBQ, and good music.  But the actual Commodore Hotel is 140 miles away in Linden, TN.

We spent the day taking our time between Vicksburg and Memphis.  We’ve been in the suburbs of cities (Atlanta, Montgomery) or in small cities (Vicksburg) until now.  We’re in downtown Memphis tonight and tomorrow.  It’s a real city-downtown; big buildings, people everywhere, walk to lots of interesting places, basketball arena, baseball field, etc. And Starbucks.

We ate at the Rendezvous.  They are famous for dry-rub pork ribs.  We’re in meat-coma at this point, so this will be a short post.

It’s 290 miles from our house to our grandchildren’s house.  Well, it’s their parents house. From our hotel in Montgomery to our hotel in Vicksburg it’s… 290 miles.  So, this is our new measure of distance.  Our longest day will be just over two Spokanes.

We made two stops along the way.  The National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened in Montgomery, AL earlier this year.

It’s the first national memorial for 4,400 victims of racial terror lynchings.  These continued well into the 1900’s.  It’s a sacred place and being there is a powerful experience.  Those metal boxes hang from the ceiling and commemorate one to many victims per county.

We stopped in Selma to see the Edmund Pettus bridge.  The bridge was the backdrop to some key events in the Civil Rights Movement.

We spend the rest of our one-Spokane trip cruising along.  It’s hot and humid down here, so we did not spend a lot time out of the car.  Lots of speed traps, but we made it through unscathed.  The nearest Starbucks is forty miles away… Unheard of where we come from.

Today we picked up the car.  It’s not too shabby…

The photo above is from the end of the delivery experience.  To back up, the day started at 9am with a tour of the facility.  It’s the corporate headquarters for PCNA (Porsche Cars North America.)  We saw the museum which has a really nice collection of “bathtub” Porsches including the seventeenth ever made.  They showed us the Restoration Center where they rebuild customers’ cars.

The main event followed.  Of course when we got to the ‘delivery room’, the car was covered.  They certainly drag out the suspense.  We were blown away when we saw the car for the first time.  It came out better than we expected.

The car is certainly complicated.  We spent ninety minutes reviewing features, getting the phones paired and getting the car itself online.  Later on when we drove off, we realized we have a ton more learning in front of us.  But, before that, I did a ninety minute track session.  That was fun!  Fortunately you drive one of their cars.  I’m sure I killed a serious amount of tire life.

Then we had lunch in their restaurant, shopped in the gift store and got lost on the way to retrieve our car from the parking garage.  A random Porsche employee was nice enough to walk us out to our car.  But first he took us inside the restoration center and introduced us to the craftsmen that work there.  This is the engine from a 60’s 912.  It’s basically an up-level Volkwagen Beetle engine from the period.

The car it belongs to is on the left.  Finally we got our car, collected our luggage at the hotel and hit the road.

We planned a light travel day; about 170 miles or so to Montgomery, AL.  We detoured to Tuskegee.  You may have heard of the Tuskegee Airmen.  We’ll keep it light here and not delve into other Tuskegee history.  We had hoped to visit one or two museums in Tuskegee.  They both closed at 4:30pm and our impromptu tour caused us to arrive too late.  We did explore the campus of Tuskegee University a little, in the car.

In Montgomery, we found nice gluten-free BBQ at Shane’s Rib Shack.  Meat coma ensued.

It’s hot and humid.  People are friendly.  Their Starbucks looks like any other Starbucks. Their Target looks like any other Target.  The car rocks!

And away we go!  Well, a little away anyway.  We’re off to spend the night at the airport; because we have an early flight to Atlanta tomorrow.  From there we will eventually make our way back home, by the end of the month.

The newpaper’s on hold, the house sitter is already in the house, hotels are reserved for about a week or so and we are packed!

The gear

This time we’re not bringing a camera.  We’re going to try using our cellphones for still and video.  We’re trying Moment lenses, both the wide-angle and telephoto.  The phone is an iPhone 8 Plus.

Software includes the Moment app, Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, Instagram (of course), WordPress (for blogging) and Smugmug.

We have a Macbook Pro and a pair of iPad Pros. And a huge pile of cables and chargers.

New this time out is a Keezel.  It’s a VPN device, and it’s not particularly light (to carry.)  In theory it provides a higher level of privacy when using public wi-fi.  It worked well-enough in a few local places over the past weekend.

And lastly, the old reliable:

Don’t leave home without it…

Hmmm, we apparently forgot to blog 2.5 years worth of travel.  There was a lot, but mostly to familar places like Boston, Boise Spokane, Indianapolis, Chicago and San Diego.

Things will get more interesting very soon…. as the President says, “Let’s see what happens.”

Planes, trains and automobiles…