After at least 14 months of travel, the majority of which will be on the move, my body will probably be ready to take the Mississippi River all the way back to New York if it could. I'm not sure what my mind will feel, probably a mixture of mental exhaustion and a sour realization that this great journey is about to end, knowing full well that the next part of the challenge lay ahead of me when I get back home and start trying to publish a book.
I probably will not have all that much time on the Mississippi to think about these things, as cruises from New Orleans to the north just are not available. I might only be on a dinner cruise in the end. If there is a substantial amount of money left, maybe I can find a boat to charter to Memphis, a city that will definitely be a stop.
(Memphis. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons/Magnus Manske)
I already have my eyes on the VIP tour at Graceland, the former mansion of Elvis that is now one of the country's most famous tourist attractions. I would love to show up in Memphis on the river that connects it to New Orleans (not to mention a total of 10 states), arriving rested and ready to tackle the city and continue my travels northeast. The river is by far the largest in the United States, and actually the second longest in the world. It does not have any of the mystique that the others profiled this week do, but it remains right at the heart of this country, splitting east and west in our minds. When I say goodbye to it after Memphis, I will be only a few days away from completing what I had started well over a year before.
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