This morning, peeking out my window I was hoping for dryness, but my hopes were dashed–more rain. So I drove in the rain for about two hours, when the rain stopped, the fog rolled in. I finally decided to pull off and wait for the fog to lift.

At my stop I visited with the locals at the roadside store and asked them if they knew the extent of the fog. They looked out the window and said with a deep drawl,

“Weil, as fer as I cun sae, it es anly raght hair.”

These are good ol’ backwoods folks that had no teeth and a drawl a mile long. I smiled and climbed back on my bike and headed down the road.

The fog lifted after about 10 minutes.

Stopping in Nashville, and wanting to see the places where the country concerts were held, I asked one of the locals where all the playhouses were? He looked at me and said, “You been on the road a long time, huh, and looking for a good time?” I realized that he thought I said cat houses. “No,” I said, “I’m a happily married man and am looking for the playhouses where the country singers perform.” (By the way, this guy had no teeth, something that seems quite common here)

Any way, I punched in The Grand Ole Opry House into my GPS and found it myself. As a teenager, Elvis Presley performed here. Because his rockabilly music was so out of the norm, after the performance the Opry House Manager told him to go back to his truck-driving career. Elvis swore he’d never go back there again. And the rest is history.

Leaving Nashville, and heading for Memphis, the skies cleared, and some blue started poking through. As I was traveling through the forested state of Tennessee, another song popped into my head:

Born on a mountain top in Tennessee
The greenest state in the land of the free
Raised in the woods so’s he knew ev’ry tree
Kilt him a b’ar when he was only three
Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier

Well, I finally arrived in Memphis, my stay for the night. Checking into my motel room I asked the clerk if there had been any Elvis sightings. She said, with a drawl, “You just missed him–He stayed here last night and checked out this morning.”

Well, maybe I’ll be lucky tonight and Elvis will visit me in my dreams.

Until tomorrow…