Hallelujah to ya!

April 24

I woke up on Sunday morning and felt a lot better. We all decided to go to a riverboat casino in Tennessee. However, I decided to do some laundry that morning and it took longer than usual to dry, that paired with other logistical issues, we decided not to go. Instead Roomie, Friend J and one of his coworkers went to a Mexican restaurant to have margaritas, which is exactly what none of us wanted. Roomie and I left shortly after for the birth place of rock and roll, Tennessee. As we got closer to the state line, we waited anxiously for a “Welcome to” sign, alas all we got was another sign over the freeway much like the one welcoming us to Arkansas while we drove over a suspiciously wide body of water. We were pretty disappointed until we found out that the large body of water we were passing over was the Mississippi River. Oops. Because it was Easter Sunday, not too many things were open and there were few people out and about. Memphis was kind of dirty and sketchy looking, but we did find a delicious bbq place about five miles outside of the city. It was in a small neighborhood and it had a huge patio on which to dine. We of course had ribs and I learned that ribs can come in two forms: wet, where the meat is cooked with the sauce on it or dry, with only a rub on it. These people were clearly serious about their ribs.

Spending Easter in the Bible Belt was definitely an experience. Nothing was open and we saw tons of “inspirational” billboards. Most were just Bible quotes, but some of them got pretty creative. Our favorite had a box of babies on it with the caption “God’s stimulus package.” I also noticed that groceries did not sell alcohol in them. For that, you have to go to a liquor store which are only open during limited hours in the day. However, many of the liquor stores have a drive through, which I thought was pretty ironic. It was pretty obvious that we were in a Red state. 

We finally got to Nashville and were too tired to do much of anything except go to bed. The next morning we packed up and went to explore Nashville.