V and I had a lovely weekend together at Wallowa Lake, in Joseph, Oregon, July 22-24.  We hiked some mountain trails, took the gondola to the top of Mount Howard, saw excellent musical performances at Embers Brew House, first by a Portland guitar duo named Bitterroot and then by local favorite Brady Goss, ate lots of good food, and generally had a good time.  I took no photos. 

For future reference, any return visit to Joseph, Oregon, has to involve a stay at the Wallowa Lake Lodge, a rustic 1920s lodge nestled at the edge of the lake amidst the pines.  Beautiful.

Well, we're still in Memphis.  Our flights don't leave until this evening so we have another morning and afternoon to bum around.  What to do?  Harold suggests the ducks at the Peabody Hotel.  Everyday at 11 am, the hotel's tradition is to run a group of ducks from the elevator to the lobby fountain, where they spend the afternoon.  It may not be the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, but the running of the Peabody Ducks in Memphis draws a crowd nonetheless:



The sign in front of the elevator at the far end of the red carpet:



Get ready:



The darting of the ducks:



Into the fountain:



Well.  Quite the scene, not so much for the ducks but for the people and the spectacle.

Now for a walk through some back alleys...



...to the legendary Sun Studios, where Elvis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, and a lot of other real famous singers and musicians have made rock & roll history:



...



Wall o' 45's:



We spent about a half hour here, not taking the tour.

Down the road, the Saint Blues Guitar Workshop, in which we poked around.  Harold tried to get me to play something on one of the guitars there, but to no avail:


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Next we passed by a Wonder Bread factory along Monroe Avenue.  It smelled incredible:


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I tried to sneak in but the place was shut tight.  No outlet store, even.

Heading back into downtown, Harold found his way onto the outfield of the AutoZone Park where the Memphis Redbirds play.  I was paranoid that law enforcement was going to descend on Harold and whisk him away, but when the helicopter crews did not arrive, I joined him:



It's time for more barbecue!  at Charles Vergo's Rendevous, along the alley near 2nd St.:



...



A barbecue joint with an entrance in an alleyway has got to be good:



Oh yes it is.  The ribs are wonderful here and once again I gorged myself silly (but given a choice I'd go for the ribs that we had last night at Central):



Returning to the hotel for some digestion and downtime.  Checked in to our flights and printed our boarding passes.  Now for the bus ride to the airport.

So long, Memphis:



Still awaiting flights, so with an empty hallway and these ingredients...



...we play makeshift bocce:



I may have won this round:



We're playing to 21:



I was in the lead for a while but Harold won.  We probably received some stares but who cares?

Some final goodbyes and we go our separate ways.  Sort of.  My plane has mechanical problems.  I'll be lucky if I get home today.  Still in Memphis, rescheduling, probably long after Harold has flown away.  I'm successfully keeping the situation from gaining command of my emotions, but I notice many other passengers are not as successful.  To them, the inconvenient delay is a tremendous irritation.

Reached Salt Lake City tonight, but no further.  Bed around 1:30 am.  Will make it back home tomorrow.

The conference ended at noon and it was time for Harold and me to drive south to Memphis.  Harold had graciously agreed to my two conditions for this phase of the trip, which was (1) to eat as much barbecue as possible, and (2) to satisfy my interest in geo-eccentricities by visiting the Kentucky Bend.  I think he's totally into the barbecue idea, but I hope I don't try his patience with the Bend.  It's sort of on the way but will require a detour.

How do you work this thing?



Oh just drive already.



First stop: Illinois.  We (OK, I) made a wrong turn and wound up in East St. Louis, across the Mississippi.  Having never been in Illinois before, I took the opportunity to stop, get out of the car, and walk on some Illinois soil for a few minutes in order to claim Illinois as something like the 34th US state that I've visited.

Ted Drewes Frozen Custard on the original Route 66, for excellent quiescently frozen dairy confections:



We drove south on Interstate 55, sort of along the eastern border of Missouri.  The scenery was nothing special except for the occasional billboard to remind you of your mortality:



There was no BBQ to speak of along this stretch so we decided to hit Lambert's Cafe in Sikeston, MO, a restaurant that bills itself as the "Home of the Throwed Roll"  (seeing the motto on the restaurant exterior set off a debate about grammar —  something about the word "throwed" in that context sounds wrong to my ears, so I'm thinking that the word should be "thrown" not "throwed"):



They throw dinner rolls at you, often from far across the room, and you have to be prepared to catch them, otherwise you have a hot roll crashing onto your table.  Someone else's video of the roll throwing:



Harold did some homework for us beforehand and learned that this place can have up to a two-hour wait.  We timed our arrival to 3 pm and we did have a wait, but fortunately it was no more than 20 minutes. 

The main dining room:



Hog jowl is available:



I like this entree because it comes with a side of cigar or Big Red chewing gum:

 

After catching and consuming a few rolls (most thrown from the opposite side of the room, as far as possible from our table) I realize I'm still working off that custard so I thought I'd just have something light, like a chef's salad.  The operating principle here was something light.  Let's say it again: Light.

Jesus, this is the BIGGEST SALAD I HAVE EVER SEEN:



It comes in a hollowed-out loaf of bread and could serve an army of about twenty.  We were laughing our asses off over how grotesquely oversized this salad was.

This is the after picture.  Note that not much has changed:



Although oversized, we realized that we cannot leave this poor creature behind.  We decided to adopt it and bring it to Memphis with us.  Into the backseat:



Getting it situated:



All ready to go:

   

I'm beginning to realize that we're not going to get to the Kentucky Bend until dark.  Screaming toward Memphis:



Heading east on State Highway P toward the Mississippi.  We're trying to catch the Dorena-Hickman ferry to take us across to Kentucky.  This ferry is apparently the only one to span Missouri and Kentucky.

Well, here we are:



...

 

We need to get over there, to Hickman:



No ferry yet, but beautiful skies:



Waiting for the ferry:



Where's the ferry?



How about now?



Now? 



It's getting dark and spooky out here:



We hear the drone of the ferry motor getting louder, and finally the ferry arrives to take us across the river in the moonlight:



Yep, there I am on the boat:



There's Harold, still totally cool about this Kentucky Bend thing:



Now we're in Kentucky:



But then, later, we're in Tennessee:



So far that's four states in one day (MO, IL, TN, KY), and we're not even done yet.

Harold is playing awesome music on his iPod.

So what is this Kentucky Bend thing that we're racing to find?  Time for some Weird Geography.  The Kentucky Bend is an inside portion of an oxbow loop meander of the Mississippi, an area of land that looks as if it should be a part of Tennessee but wound up being a piece of Kentucky as the result of surveyor inaccuracy.  The Bend is part of Kentucky (indeed, it is the southwestern corner of that state), but it is completely separated from the rest of the state (a state-level exclave), surrounded by Tennessee to the south and Missouri on all other sides.  The Bend, also known as "Bubbleland," is shown in this picture:



Mark Twain wrote about what life was like in this little nub of land in the book Life on the Mississippi:

Both families belonged to the same church ... They lived each side of the line, and the church was at a landing called Compromise. Half the church and half the aisle was in Kentucky, the other half in Tennessee. Sundays you'd see the families drive up, all in their Sunday clothes, men, women, and children, and file up the aisle, and set down, quiet and orderly, one lot on the Tennessee side of the church and the other on the Kentucky side; and the men and boys would lean their guns up against the wall, handy, and then all hands would join in with the prayer and praise; though they say the man next to the aisle didn't kneel down, along with the rest of the family; kind of stood guard.

I'm a nut for these sorts of geographical anomalies and make it a point to try to visit them when I travel.  I had identified the Bend a couple of years ago and now I wanted to see it for myself.  The bad news was that it was now very dark.  The good news is that there is basically nothing to see here, even in the daytime.  No geo-oddity amusement park, no monument to geo-weirdness, no nothing.  Only 17 people live here according to the 2000 census.

Well, here we are at the border looking north.  We're on the Tennessee side.  The Kentucky Bend begins where the double yellow line ends:



The road heads north for maybe two or three miles and dead ends.  Other than farmhouses and farmland, the only sight out here is the Madrid Bend Families' Cemetery:



Proof that I was at the Bend:



We had some fun with the long-exposure settings on our cameras.  There was a full moon out and the weather was very good, so we just played with our cameras while the dogs barked at us down the road:

  

After this stop we high-tailed it to Memphis.  Unbelievably, Harold seemed to enjoy the Bend.  We stopped in Tiptonville, Tennessee to hunt down some barbeque (no luck), then stopped again in Osceola, Arkansas for gas (fifth state in one day!).  Arrived in Memphis with the salad and in good spirits, sometime around 10 pm.

A full day of conferencing, which consists of attending multiple research talks on memory as well as attending poster sessions. Lots of good presentations that represent the cutting edge of cognitive psychology.

Met my collaborator in person for the first time today. She is a professor at Bryn Mawr and we've been working on a project together for about a year and a half now, all through e-correspondence. I'm delighted to meet her and talk shop for a bit. Talked to many other researchers and colleagues at the noon poster session.

Lori gave a nice talk on tip-of-the-tongue states as related to stress.

More talks and posters. Conferences are always intense.

Later, dinner at Donna & Tracey's home in Kirkwood. A delightful dinner with former grad student buddies and some of their former students. Later, Donna and Tracey's daughter Adrianne convinced everyone to don princess dresses and dance around the living room. Seeing all my former buddies decked out as Jasmine, Cinderella, Belle, or whoever that evening was not something I would have predicted by any stretch of the imagination.

I was spared the dress but acquiesced to a pirouette. I mean, how can I say no to a cute little girl with big eyes asking me to dance with her?

One pirouette is where I draw the line, though.

That's day 2 in St. Louis. No barbeque.

I have a new itinerary. I'll report on this excursion soon:

Day 1: Fly to St. Louis, MO
Day 2: St. Louis, MO
Day 3: St. Louis, MO
Day 4: Drive to Memphis, TN
Day 5: Memphis, TN
Day 6: Return to Walla Walla, WA