Madison

I've had these photos in a draft for a while but of course I keep forgetting about them. Instead I've been writing really inspiring case studies and papers on the topic of supply chain risk management! I know, great right?

This is Camp Randall. I did buy football season tickets this year (sorry Spartans) and probably will again, but they're in the student section and lets face it - I'm too old for that mess. So I'll sell most of them again (if I get them, tickets sold out in 15 minutes last year.)

Downtown from Lake Menona

Union Terrace on Lake Mendota. It's really too bad the two lakes in Madison have such similar names. I get them so confused...

Union Terrace again at sunset. If ever in Madison this is a really lovely spot to sit. There's frequently music, you overhear some really amusing conversations, and you get to have drinks on a lake. Nothing bad there!

2012 = Year of the Roadtrip

January was Florida, April was Ireland (partial road trip at least), May is to California, August is from California... I need a November or December trip! Any suggestions?

Actually a group of us were discussing a post-Christmas December road trip to Central America but Mexico seems too iffy. So we're potentially flying instead. Problem solved!

This is becoming a bad travel blog rather than a my-life blog... or is it that I have no life outside of travel??

Road Trip Finale

Apparently I never posted this... I'm the worst. And now it's kind of the worst too.

Ok so, the last bit of the trip was actually the part I wanted to see most. We were going to Graceland!!! I was very, very (much) excited for this. First we stopped in Mississippi at the petrified forest, mostly out of curiosity. It was a nice walk. There were plenty of petrified logs, but they look like regular logs so... yeah. Neat anyway. This is an ancient log:

Petrified in the Petrified forest?

Next stop Memphis! Beale Street is pretty short, which is a bit surprising given how much it's advertised. There were a bunch of great music spots though and we did hang out for some very good bar shows.

But the main attraction was this place. It was everything I'd hoped it would be. I was prepared for it being small because a number of people had mentioned that, but I wasn't prepared for the all out gloriousness of the 70's time stop. I knew it would be great, but I didn't imagine THIS great.

Creepy monkey statue with mirror ceiling? Check.

Crazy carved wood chairs and carpeted ceiling? Check.  (no flashes allowed, boo.)

And there was more. So much more... folded fabric wallpaper, so many  mirrors.... 

Obviously there were the suits. Ryan and I were planning to get matching jumpsuits, but sadly they didn't have my size.

Best. Trashcans. Ever.

To even out my Elvis tour (which Ryan enjoyed, despite his initial skepticism) we also toured the Gibson factory. Unfortunately it was Sunday so my supply nerd tour loving self couldn't see anyone working, but there was WIP lying around so I pretended. I'm definitely impressed that there's so much manual work still put into making the guitars while maintaining high quality. If the quality is bad they destroy them - I'm imagining people rock star smashing them at lunch. In which case I'd like to apply for a job.

Word.

The remainder of the trip was fine... until Illinois. Of course. There we met intense fog followed by snow in Wisconsin. Uggggghhhhh.  

Grand total: 3,874.8 miles of fun! (and creepy monkey statues)