Nashville and Memphis

Emerging from the Great Smoky Mountains, we very quickly found civilisation again in country music and cowboy-crazy Nashville.

The neon lights of lower Broadway, Nashville - lined with honky-tonks and cowboy outfit souvenir shops.
The Willie Nelson museum, established when Willie sold all his worldly goods to pay off $16.7 million in unpaid taxes in the early 1990s.
The Walk of Fame. Dolly even owns her own theme park ('Dollywood!') just out of Nashville.
The Ryman Auditorium, the so-called 'Mother Church of Country Music'.
The Country Music Hall of Fame.
Our motel in Nashville, complete with honky-tonk band playing by the pool.

After two nights in Nashville, we drove west to Memphis, quite a sad city with countless abandoned buildings.
It doesn't look much from the outside, but inside is a bustling diner with a neverending queue of people waiting to try the best fried chicken in the world (allegedly). It was pretty good. And cheap.
The Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in 1968.
Elvis was discovered in Memphis and bought Graceland in 1957. He lived here till his death in an upstairs bedroom in 1977.
Graceland. Its Colonial-style exterior belies a completely retro 70s look after Elvis redecorated in 1974 with vinyl walls, fake waterfalls and green shag-carpet ceiling.
The front room, complete with 15ft couch on the right.
Elvis's Wall of Fame. And an Elvis impersonator...
Some of his funky one-pieces.
His grave in the Meditation Garden at Graceland.

After lots of Southern fried chicken and country music overload, we headed south to our next stop - New Orleans.