My family and I are driving to Tennessee on a long exciting road trip to visit Graceland and my grandfather. We are leaving our perfect California weather heading for exhausting record breaking heat of one hundred degrees. I’m hoping when we reach our destination my family and I will have had some fun bonding and learned more about each other’s likes, dislikes, and patience.
We are finally stopping for the night to get some much needed shut eye after twelve hours trapped in a car. We hit a massive lightning storm passing through Arizona; the thunder was as loud as banging drums next to your ears. My dad typed “Holiday Inn Express” in our GPS but it took us to a Howard Johnson that smelled like dirty feet. The hotel had no elevators thus my family and I had to drag four heavy suitcases up a flight of narrow stairs.
It’s six in the morning here, which is four in the morning California time, and we’re back on the wide open road. We are passing through New Mexico and I have sadly pointed out that this is where High School Musical takes place, so now guess what were watching on the portable DVD player? We are in Oklahoma and are stopping in Oklahoma City to visit the ASA Softball Hall of Fame is located. My family walked through the doors and my younger sister’s eyes lit up as bright as the stars when she saw her picture on the wall in the same building as her hero Jenny Finch’s. It was as if she was a super star for the moment and all eyes were on her because her team won western nationals the previous summer.
It is a brand new day and my family took the platinum tour of Graceland, Elvis Presley’s mansion this afternoon. The tour was remarkable and incredibly educational. We were able to explore his two airplanes, The Lisa Marie after his daughter and the other one is unnamed. His mansion is huge and a couple of stories tall including a basement. Elvis was a world wide phenomenon back in the fifties, sixties, and seventies. Sadly he died at a young age of forty two and was buried at Graceland along side his mother, father, and grandmother.
Around midnight my mom and I snuck onto a golf course to visit my grandfather’s grave. He was buried ten years ago and his wife will not let us visit. It was darker than a cave even under the bright shining stars of the night sky as we crept slowly and quietly to find the grave only to discover he was not even buried in the backyard. We called my cousin in California who knows where he is buried and he told us he was never buried and he sits in his wife’s living room above the fireplace; our little nighttime rendezvous in the dead of night was a failure.
After four days of seeing beautiful land as we drove cross country I am ready for a long nap in my warm comfortable bed. This vacation has by far been one of the most fun and enjoyable vacations my family has ever taken together. We spent a lot of time with one another and shared our smiles and laughs with each other enjoying each other’s company. Even though the car ride was extremely long and occasionally boring it was definitely worth the time. I look forward to having another exciting adventure like this one in the near future whether it is a vacation or learning new things in college.
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