Road Trip 2008 - Travel to Dallas

Graceland

From Nashville, TN we headed down I40 to Memphis, TN. I learned that Tennessee takes a long time to travel through going East to West! Almost 4 times longer than Mass. I do love the 70MPH speed limits. Never saw law enforcement once! My wife wanted to stop in at Elvis Presley's Graceland but by the time we arrived it had been closed for several hours. We were surprised to find that this location is more or less set back in a small city. The is a small side access road that you can drive up to and "live park" to get out and take a peak. That is exactly what we did on this rainy cold night (along with a few dozen other people). The picture of the house is from the city street. The visitor center across the street was all lit up with Christmas lights along with music playing (by the king of course!) Elvis' plane "the Lisa Marie" is available for touring as well. Overall, I expected Graceland to be much more in a country setting. It was very interesting but it is probably somewhere I would visit without children.

We stayed the night in Little Rock, Arkansas. The next morning I tried to convince my wife to visit the President Bill Clinton's Library but she wanted nothing of it so we moved ahead to Dallas Texas.

Saltgrass

We were in Dallas for a week while I was on business. Dallas is a HUGE city and believe it or not can be quite intimidating to drive in with these super structure highways and over passes. This was enough for my wife to stay in and catch the kids up on their homeschool work while I was at work. Also my oldest son was sick so we didn't go anywhere. The last night there we ventured out for steak at the Saltgrass restaurant. I beleive this is a southern chain resturant but definately ALL Texas! My wife had Cattleman's Prime Rib with a very large baked potato smothered in sour cream along with a tasty caesar salad. The prime rib in our opinion was just a bit on the fatty side but otherwise very tasty. I had the Wagon Boss Top Sirloin steak (cooked medium) along with a baked potato and a full sized garden salad. My steak was absolutely delicious and I ate every bite (no fat whatsoever). I heard a long time ago that the meat is tastier and leaner in Texas because the cattle are wheat fed vs. corn fed (not sure if this is true or not but I do have to say the entire meal was great). The waiter supplied plenty of wheat bread with a sweet butter. We went through 3 loaves! The weird part of the dining experience that was that the home of "JR Ewing" were were dining in a "dry area" and in order to have a beer they had to scan my license. The beer (can't remember the name) was OK and I didn't want to go through the hassle so only had 1 small glass (and I later found out that it was inexpensive: only $1.50 compared to my wife's $2.29 ice tea.

Great Time! Even the kids enjoyed their pizza and chicken nuggets. My daughter even ordered and the devoured the kids BBQ Baby Back Ribs. The service was awesome and made us feel at home waiter dresses in Western style.