Memphis Day 3: Pyramid, Cemetery and a Broken Car

Visit to the Bass Pro shop in the Pyramid today. Another warm day in Memphis so being in the air conditioning is definitely the place to be.

The Bass Pro shop is almost an indoor wildlife park with fish and alligators! 🐊 Was interesting checking out the variety of guns and crossbows on offer!

We took the lift, US$8 each, to the top to check out the lookout. Amazing how flat and far you can see, not a single hill or mountain in sight. While at the top we decided to have lunch at the restaurant, not the cheapest but also not something we’d do every day!

A stop at the Tennessee Welcome Center to see the statue of Elvis here along with one of BB King. There's a little bit about the other great aspects of Tennessee history here also such as the Civil War etc. Plenty of material to take away with ideas on other places you can go and see while in Memphis.

The statue of Elvis used to be outside but people used to regularly break the tassels off from the suit, I suspect as souvenirs, so it's since been bout inside and locked up at night.

We swung by Forest Hill Cemetery on our way back from the Pyramid and stop at the Welcome Center. Elvis was originally buried here in the mausoleum when he passed away in 1977 as his mother Gladys was also buried here in 1948.

Unfortunately a couple of scallywags tried to break in and allegedly steal Elvis’ body. After this Vernon, Elvis’ dad decided both Elvis and Gladys’ bodies were to be moved to Graceland.

While here, we also found the grave of Bill Black, who played bass in Elvis’ backing band and was also credited as being one of the early founders of rock n roll. As a fun fact, Bill and KD share a birthday (day/month, not year 🤣)

While driving around the cemetery the car completely lost power and died on us! We tried to restart it with no luck and the engine light remained on.

Now everyone knows how good Dave is with an engine so he immediately jumped out, kicked the tyres a few times, popped the hood, tapped a few things, rubbed his chin, shook his head, leaned over the engine, pulled the oil dip stick out, nodded, then said “god knows what’s going on!”. We tried to start the car again and after about 5 seconds of the car turning over it started up. Was a bit rough initially but then seemed to run fine, engine light still on though.

Our accommodation was about 6km away so we figured we’re better off there than in the middle of a cemetery so slowly drive back there. The car is rented via Turo, a peer-to-peer platform so Dave was worried how things were going to pan out. We let the vehicle owner know what happened then raised a call with Turo. Very long story short the car “has now left the building” on the back of a truck and as Turo only do same pick up/drop off location, we got a refund and had figure out our next option to get to Houston leaving this Thursday.

Another long story short, we’ve now got an AVIS rental for less than the refund we got from Turo and can drop off at Houston airport (we couldn’t with the Turo vehicle). So while a royal PITA today with multiple phone calls, we problem solved and all going to plan, come out on the better side of things. Now let’s just hope the Turo car actually turns up on Houston and we don’t get any surprise charges!