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Restaurants Travel Vacation

Eating at the 1982 World’s Fair

The 1982 World’s Fair was held in Knoxville, Tennessee.  Knoxville is about a 5-hour drive from where we lived at the time. Our family decided to go to the fair for our summer vacation. My wife and I were dating at the time and my family invited her to go on the trip. My sister invited one of her friends to go on the trip too.  The six of us traveled to Knoxville for the fair.  One of my cousins was in veterinarian school in Knoxville at the time. We stayed with him and his wife and they acted as our tour guides while we were at the fair.

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Restaurants Travel Vacation

Bob Evans Coffee

Several years ago, my family were on vacation.  We decided to stop at a Bob Evans restaurant for breakfast. We don’t have any Bob Evans restaurants very close to where we live and my family had never been to one before. I had eaten at one during my work travel and had an idea of the type of food you could get there.  There was a Bob Evans close to where we were staying one night and I recommended it when my wife said she wanted breakfast.  Everyone was satisfied with everything we had except for my wife. She didn’t like the coffee.  She assumed that it was just a bad batch of coffee. We didn’t really think that much of it at the time.

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Elvis Week Album Kids Travel Vacation Video

Making the Video for Just Say You Don’t Love Me

On June 2, 2016, my son turned 21.  I decided to take him on a trip to the Kentucky Bourbon Trail to celebrate his birthday. At the time, The Kentucky Bourbon Trail included visits to the facilities of 8 bourbon manufacturers in Kentucky. Three of the manufacturers had two facilities that you can visit so a complete tour included 11 stops.  There are tours and tastings at all of these stops. We did everything at all of the stops except for the Jim Beam facility in downtown Louisville. The main thing that they had going on at that stop were just tastings. We arrived there late on our first day of the trip with plans to eat a meal and celebrate my son’s birthday in the 4th Street district in downtown Louisville where this facility is located.  We moved to the celebration after walking through that shop.

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Florida Travel Vacation

Blind at the Beach

My family and I were at the public beach in Panama City. I was on an inflatable raft and had made my way out to a sandbar.  While I was there, I saw my mom come out to the sandbar too.  I thought it was odd that she was there without an inflatable raft. Any other time I had seen here on the sandbar, she was on a raft. As she approached I shouted to her saying “How did you get out here?” She seemed confused and didn’t seem to understand what I was saying.  She asked what I said as she got closer. I asked the question again and she replied that she swam out there. That’s when I realized that this was not my mom. It didn’t sound like her. I am very nearsighted and didn’t have any glasses. But as she got closer I realized that she didn’t really look that much like my mom. She was nice lady and I ended up talking to her for a while but I would never have said anything to her if I knew it was someone else.

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Florida Travel Vacation

First Florida Vacation

My sister and I were both in elementary school when we took our first Florida vacation. I’m not sure how old we were. Panama City was our destination.  We packed the family station wagon with a tent and traveled all day. I’m not sure how early we started our trip and I think we got lost on the way there, but it was very late and we had not arrived. Everyone in the car had fallen asleep except for my dad and he finally got to a point where he could not stay awake any longer. He finally pulled the car over to the side of the road not really knowing where we were. ​

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Kids Travel Vacation

Highland Manor Winery

Our family was on vacation visiting an area of Middle Tennessee where we lived for about three years. This was about a year or two after we had moved back to West Tennessee and our kids were still really young.  At the time our youngest daughter, Mary, was probably about 4 years old. When we lived in that area, we had discovered a winery called Highland Manor. It is the oldest winery in Tennessee. We found a couple of their wines that we really liked and planned to stop there any time we were in the area.

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True Stories

Big Game Hunting in Wyoming

I have a friend that went big game hunting in Wyoming several years ago.  When he got back from his trip, he invited us over for a meal where we got to sample some meat from animals that we don’t usually find in West Tennessee except maybe at the zoo.  During the meal, he told us a story from his trip.


While his days were filled with hunting, he and his hunting companions were looking for a little ​something to do at night. They went down to the desk of the place they were staying and asked if there was anything to do in town that night. The desk clerk asked if they had ever been to a chicken roping contest. They replied that they had never even heard of chicken roping. The clerk told them that the state championship was taking place in town that night. Of course they had to go.

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Graceland

Graceland in Transition – Part Three

The last of 3 stories about my April trip to Graceland.​
​​We didn’t do the tour until Saturday after the conference was over. I was waiting on the back patio of the hotel while my wife was finishing up her last session. I talked to a man from Carbondale, Illinois who had gotten married at the Chapel at Graceland the day before.  He was a big Elvis fan and it was his idea to do the wedding there. It sounds like they have a nice area on the grounds to conduct weddings and they give the newlyweds and their party a special tour. I had never met anyone that had been married at Graceland or at least no one that told me about it. Later when we did the tour, we ran into another couple that had gotten married on Friday at Graceland. When I mentioned meeting the other couple, they said they were the only two couples that were married that day at Graceland. This second couple was younger and the bride was the one who was the Elvis fan. They were doing the tour with both sets of parents and they were all in from Pennsylvania.

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Graceland

Graceland in Transition – Part Two

The second of 3 stories about my April trip to Graceland.​
​​The autism conference started on a Thursday. I stayed with my wife while she checked into the conference so I would have an idea of her schedule and when we would try to check in to the hotel. After she checked in, I decided to go down to the mansion and scope out the visitor’s center to get a first look at the changes.

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Graceland

Graceland in Transition – Part One

The first of 3 stories about my April trip to Graceland.​
March 30, 2017, I made my first trip to Graceland at a time other than Elvis Week. My wife was attending an autism conference at the Guesthouse at Graceland and asked me to tag along with her. The Guesthouse is a new hotel run by Elvis Presley Enterprises and is located almost directly next to the mansion. The hotel opened in October. A new visitor’s center with new exhibits call Elvis Presley’s Memphis opened in early March. With an autism conference going on, the hotel being open for less than a year and the visitor’s center being less open for less than a month, this was going to be an interesting trip. This would also be the first time that my visit to Graceland involved an overnight stay.

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