Elvis Encore!
The next room featured some of his wardrobe in his long and distinguished movie career. Growing up with Elvis a person just does not recall the huge amount of films that he made. I must have seen every one of them. There was his white jumpsuit that he got married in from the movie Blue Hawaii, to his costumes in "Jailhouse Rock" to "King Creole" that was filmed in New Orleans, and his robe in "Kid Galahad".
On the opposite wall there were many cancelled cheques from his generous donations to a very wide range of charities, many of them $1,000 or more. Elvis was well known throughout Memphis as a philanthropist. Moving through this room we proceeded up the stairs and out into the backyard. There was a small building in the back that could have possibly served as a blacksmith shop. Elvis used this building as a shooting range as he possessed a number of handguns.
Next there was a weight room where he liked to work out. Included in his weight room was a great looking Pinball Machine. That took me back to the misspent days of my youth. :-p
Exiting this building and off to one side we were able to view a small pasture that housed the offspring of his horses. I assumed that they were the offspring as they seemed quite young, they were great looking horses chestnut in colour.
There was a swimming pool to one side and beside the pool was the last resting place of his Mother, Father, and his Grandmother Minnie Mae, his brother Jessie and of course the King himself.
There was so much to see on this tour of Graceland that I am sure that I have forgotten half of it. From the graveside we moved to the front of the house where we boarded the trolley to be ferried back across the road. Upon arriving there were people waiting for you to sell you the picture they took of you at the start of the tour. $27.00, sorry folks not this time. We are happy with the ones from our first visit. Think they were $19.00 at the time.
We boarded our bus and headed for our hotel for the evening. Another tiring day. Slept like a baby!
This pretty much took care of our tour as this last day was mostly travel time. Heading for Indianapolis and a farewell dinner consisting of Fried chicken with all the trimmings. I took the opportunity to thank our bus driver Hartley and our tour director Dave on behalf of the group for the great times they provided and the care that they had shown us.
Early next morning we boarded the bus after breakfast and eventually arrived at the Detroit/Windsor border crossing. There we visited the duty free store and we were allowed $800.00 of purchases to bring home with us. To show the differences between Canadian customs and the American customs we were passed through in a very short time.
We left the bus in Chatham, ON and our shuttle driver Ted took us right to our door. He even carried our luggage upstairs for us. All in all it was a great trip. We truly enjoyed it. I would ;like to thank you all for allowing me to share this time with you. It is greatly appreciated. Peter
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Thank you Kyle. It was a great trip. Would like to do it again but not with a tour group. It makes for long days on the bus and you really don't get a lot of time to go exploring on your own. Peter
Yeah, sometimes it is nice to be on your own and not have to do what the group is always doing. Your next trip!
Now, I can almost say "been there and done that." Thanks Phaeton. By the way, are you named after the son of Helios?
As a matter of fact yes! Nice catch Salem. One of my interests is solar power. It is very strange how my pick of phaeton for my online name came about. I really liked the sound of that name so I chose it for my online persona. One day I thought that I would do some research on it. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that he was the son of Helios,
the Greek god of the sun.
Apparently he was a real bad ass and he took his fathers chariot for a ride across the heavens without his fathers permission. The horses were to difficult for him to handle and he lost control of them. They got away from him and they flew too far from the earth. The earth cooled down and that created winter.
When he regained some control the horses plunged back to the earth and scorched the land creating the desserts. Eventually he wound up crashing into the sea. Quite an interesting tale. Peter
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Welcome home!
Thanks Shawn. Good to be back.