On the road again…

It’s time for a spring adventure. So, I and the rest of the Craig family womyn (minus the kitty) are road tripping to Texas! Today we woke up just outside Saint Louis, Missouri and started traveling toward Memphis.

I have wanted to go to The National Civil Rights Museum for a couple of years and we finally added it to our list of destinations before our “final destination” (da da da). I’m so glad we finally made it there! Memphis is an eclectic mix of culture. The Civil Rights Museum, which is located in the Lorraine Motel (where MLK was assassinated), is under renovation now, but even with parts of the museum under construction, it’s a very interesting, educational and straight-forward look at the civil rights movement and they ways we have advanced (and not) our society over the years. Right now at the museum is an awesome exhibit called Freedom’s Sisters which is a tour of the prominent womyn change-makers through history. At the end of the tour, you can make your own “binder of women” (my own name for the tour booklets full of these amazing womyns’ biographies).

Just outside of the museum, there was a mysterious plastic tent with a sign that read something like “Jacqueline Smith, protestor for 22-something years”. I looked it up, and it turns out that Jacqueline Smith was a resident in the Lorraine Motel at the time that MLK was staying there. When the Civil Rights Museum bought (or acquired?) the Lorraine Motel, she was evicted from her residence and has protested ever since. I would have loved to learn more about her protests, but it was misting and cold and needed to get a move on, so I wrote down the idea in my evernote story notebook, and we moved on. I do want to pursue in learning more about this interesting protest.

In Memphis, we found a couple of absolutely delicious vegan restaurants as well. We ate our fill of vegan cupcakes, burgers, milkshakes, salads, brownies and c

ookies. One of these restaurants is Fuel Cafe, a very green restaurant which is in

of itself upcycled–the restaurant used to be a gas station! The other, Imagine Cafe is a homey and self-described laid back, family owned restaurant featuring outstanding milkshakes and pastries. We also had some steamedbroccoli and spinach which was out of this world! I guess that the reason for it being so delicious could have been that we maybe (just maybe) had devoured too many cupcakes for one day…noting that a little broccoli can’t fix.

Anyway, it was a fabulous, educational day on the road. Oh how I do love adventuring!