World's Awesomest EVERYTHINGS!

When Ben and I were in Atlanta visiting my uncle Bob, he took us to the Georgia Aquarium, the largest aquarium in the world. It's pretty difficult to get good pictures at an aquarium, since nearly all of the animals are used to very little light. The coolest exhibit, and thankfully the one with the most light, was the enormous saltwater tank that held THREE whale sharks. These sharks are huge. They grow to an average of 40 ft, and weigh about 15 tons. The largest recorded specimen was 60 ft long! So basically they are the ocean equivalent of an 18-wheeler.

These sharks are really beautiful and majestic animals.


Two at once!

It's very difficult to get an idea of how huge they really are, because the two feet of glass encompassing the tank distorts how you see what's behind it. But hopefully you can see here that just the final tail fin of the shark is about the size of a person.

And an angry looking alligator (or crocodile).

From Atlanta we headed to Memphis, TN, home of Elvis and Rock 'n' Roll. We couldn't leave without taking in a little bit of each, so we visited Graceland and the studio birthplace of rock and roll.

Since neither of us are huge Elvis fans, we decided to skip the mansion tour, and just go to his car museum. Again, there was very little light in the Elvis Auto museum; for some reason museum curators, et al, must think people LIKE having mostly dark pictures. (In order to get the best use of available light (no flash allowed) and also be close up and still get most of the car in the frame, I had to use a somewhat wide-angle lens, so please disregard the slightly distorted perspective.) I still got sweet pictures of a couple of Elvis' cars. I don't remember all the stories behind the cars, but I did make sure to take pictures of the labels so I could remember which car was which.

Perhaps the most beautiful car I have ever seen, a 1971 Stutz Blackhawk. This picture does NOT do this car justice. It is a sexy beast of a machine, and it was almost ecstasy just to look at it.

Elvis' famous 1955 pink Cadillac Fleetwood. Damn, cars used to be so huge.

Did I say huge? Just seven years later this mammoth 1962 Lincoln Continental was more beautiful and even longer than that '55 Caddy.

A unique design element of this car are the custom "suicide doors" that really make it a bad-ass gangster-mobile.

1966 Rolls Royce. Nothing exciting for me to say about it, but it's very elegant.

Elvis' 1956 purple Cadillac El Dorado convertible. Custom paint, custom white leather interior. This man knew how to spend his money.

The next day we went to Sun Studio, where Elvis got his first recording contract. Sam Phillips owned Memphis Recording Service and recorded a lot of at the time unknown blues artist that other people wouldn't record because they weren't white. Artists like B. B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Junior Parker, and others were recorded for the first time by Sam Phillips. Eventually, Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, and more, made their way through Sam's recording studio, and the tour guides like to think his studio was the "birthplace of rock 'n' roll". I suppose since Sam was recording the blues musicians that inspired all the rock 'n' rollers, maybe his studio did have a hand in the "invention" of rock 'n' roll.

Studio front as it looked in the '50s, except for the "Sun" sign. Sam Phillips never called any of his various music industry ventures "Sun Studio", it was simply a name that was applied to this studio by the people who turned it into a tourist attraction in the '80s.

Ben rocking out with THE microphone that was used by almost everyone that walked through that studio: Cash, Lewis, Presley, etc.

Our final stop in Memphis was Beale Street, which is closed off on the weekends for foot traffic only. There are a ton of bars that feature different blues and blues-inspired musicians, and we were lucky enough to come by when some guys were doing crazy flips and stuff. They were moving too fast to get a really dynamite shot, but here are a couple mid-air views:

Yeah, this guy was flying. He was really that far off the ground, it's not some optical illusion because of where I was standing or something.

Another not so close, but equally amazing view of the same guy in his final flip of that run.

We are now in St. Louis, MO, and aside from the huge number of old-factories-turned-apartment buildings, I haven't found a lot to take pictures of. It may be a while before I post again, since the drive from here to Denver probably won't be a very visually exciting one...

-Lily