DAY FOUR

JACKSON, TN - MEMPHIS, TN - LITTLE ROCK, AK - OKLAHOMA CITY, OK

589 MILES. Left Jackson, TN: 10am. Arrived Oklahoma City, OK: 12:30am.

Whew. This was a very long day in the car. Kenny did all 589 miles of driving (he likes it I swear) including about 7 hours straight from Memphis to Oklahoma City. We woke up and drove from our hotel in Jackson, TN to Memphis. Once we got to Memphis, we took a little driving tour to find Payne's BBQ, a restaurant famous for their fried bologna sandwiches. Unfortunately, once reaching the restaurant we found a hand written sign stating that the Payne family will be on vacation until the 18th (my birthday), and that the restaurant is closed. 

Memphis was surprisingly desolate and a bit run down, but it had a lot of character that I really liked. After driving through the Central Gardens Historic District full of big, fancy houses, we drove over to the downtown area and went to have lunch at Gus' World Famous Fried Chicken.

 It is world famous for a good reason. The small place was packed with both locals and tourists standing at the front hawking over tables waiting for them to leave. We were seated and ordered fried pickles, one white meat meal, one dark meat meal, and sweet iced tea. The chicken melted in your mouth when biting into it, and the fried pickles were so delicious.
 After lunch, we took a walk down Beale Street, which was similar to Nashville's Broadway but replacing country music with the blues. It was a really cool place with interesting stores and restaurant/bars. 

After walking around a while the Memphis heat really started getting to us, and we drove over to Sun Studios. Unfortunately, the wait time was a bit longer than we had been planning to stay, so we drove over to Graceland instead. It was well worth the cost, and really fun to check out Elvis' home, planes, and car collection. I never really thought I cared much about Elvis, but really enjoyed learning about him and his legacy. It lived up to its reputation as one of the tackiest homes in America, including the jungle room, and pool room completely covered in the same fabric pattern. 

After spending a few hours there, we decided to get a move on for Oklahoma City. We entered Arkansas a few minutes after leaving Memphis, and after two hours once again on I40, we diverted to Little Rock for a break. We maybe saw 20 people after driving around the city for 15 minutes, and noticed that everything was already closed around 7pm. 

Arkansas state capitol

It was honestly pretty boring, and we decided to continue on. We had previously received some tips that driving through Tennessee would be the most boring stretch of our trip, but Arkansas easily took that title away. There was nothing to look at, and I was quite relieved once we reached Oklahoma. It was already dark at that point, and we decided to start looking for motels about 100 miles outside of Oklahoma City. There were very few options of where to stay and most were already full by 11pm. But Kenny was resilient, and said he was able to finish driving the last stretch to Oklahoma City, where we found a Super 8 right on the outskirts. It is seriously time to sleep.