Ed and Jean Herbert's Memphis Trip

From Ed Herbert 5/20/20

Ed & Jean Herbert

Our travels to Memphis

First off, we had a great time at the TGO Rally in Florida back in February – thanks to the Sohles and the Jones for putting on such a great rally. 

After Jean and I left, we meandered over to Ocala to visit friends and then headed north to have work done on our rig. We stopped for several nights at the Florence Marina State Park  on the Alabama-Georgia border. What a lovely park! I was fishing on the dock the second afternoon when this log came floating by. The log stopped, turned, looked at me, and then kept going; I realized that it wasn’t a log!     He (she??) was about 8 feet long, and I stayed up on the pier....        

Our destination was Belmont, MS., home of the Tiffin Paint Shop. We were getting the rig repainted by one of Tiffin’s workers, Mr. Rick Magee,  who has a side business repainting rigs. His company is Profinishes, Inc; we stayed  at Sparks Drive-In and B&B right next door. This was actually a great combination – Mrs. Sparks runs a very nice little B&B with three apartments next to her restaurant  and we got free dinners. We rented a car back in Red Bay from the Red Bay Body Shop – another great little place. They came out to Belmont and picked us up. But we didn’t want so sit around Belmont for four days, so Jean and I took off for Memphis, about two hours away. Loved it! Much better than Nashville. We had great Bar-B-Que, listened to great Blues and of course did the tours. Sun Record Studios was first. I stood right where Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, etc. stood in that little recording studio and still swear that I could hear them.      We went up to the Stax Record Museum and got a full load of Booker T. & the MGs, Aretha Franklin, and Ike Turner making their music. And of course, we hit Graceland – you have to see this at least once. The mansion was pretty neat, but the real  draw are the exhibits in the Presley Exhibition center – his music, clothes, movies, cars, and tributes from artists that Elvis inspired, including Gene Simmons from KISS (pretty weird,  but true).

We go back to Belmont   three days later and picked up a shiny, brand-new looking (to us, anyway) rig. The price was right, too. Anyway, we headed north back to Virginia. One night we stayed at a campground off I-81 in Radford, Va., at a site that had to be the worst in the United States. I can’t remember the name, only that it was     literally under   I-81, and had been under the river the previous night. Oh well, we left early the next morning.

All in all, a great trip, and we had planned going out again in April and May to fishing camps, Bluegrass concerts and the motorcycle races, but all that has been scotched.  So we are eager to see this virus thing come to an end   and get back on the road. If you want more information on the rig painters, Mrs. Sparks, or Belmont, let me know – it was a really good trip.

Ed & Jean