Graceland & Little Rock

Saturday morning we got up and visited Graceland. We walked through the mansion, as well as viewing Elvis' private planes and cars. The mansion itself is not that impressive - it's just a fairly big house - I'd guess about 6,000 square feet. It is interesting to see how Elvis decorated it in the mid-70's. Susan was disappointed that the tour did not include the upstairs rooms - just the main floor and the basement. The outbuildings are now being used to house exhibits on Elvis' life, and were fairly well done.

The car museum was also pretty cool. The kids liked that it was themed to a drive in, and sat and enjoyed watching the short clip of Elvis' film highlights. The two planes included the Lisa Marie, a big four engine jet that we walked through to see how Elvis' customized it (gold-plated seat belt buckles!), and a smaller jet that was mostly used by his manager. The tour was pretty interesting, although it was also fairly expensive. We spent about 3 hours doing it all.

In the afternoon, we drove to Little Rock, Arkansas, and visited the Little Rock Central High School NHS. The High School was the site of a confrontation in 1957 due to Arkansas' refusal to abide by the Brown vs Board of Education decision. The high school is still in use, but the National Park has a small but well done visitor center nearby.

It was almost 4 pm when we arrived, and the center was scheduled to close at 4:30, but the Ranger and his assistant there stayed open an extra 10 minutes or so to award the kids their Jr Ranger badges. They were very nice, the program was well done, and a new, larger visitor center is under construction, scheduled to open later this year. After we finished there we headed south to Benton, where we spent the night.