We were up early this day and eating cereal for breakfast to get on the road early once again. We didn't have a terribly long drive, but we had a must-stop museum in Memphis - the Civil Rights Museum. We'd studied the Civil Rights Movement during our modern history year last year so the kids were familiar with it. I'd actually been to this museum about 15 years ago so I knew they would really enjoy and learn a bunch. Dave wouldn't be able to join us this day as he would be working at a coffee shop around the corner.
This museum is actually housed partially in the hotel where Martin Luther King, Jr. was staying when he was shot. Immediately as I walked into the museum I knew things had changed drastically. The tour I remember issued each person an audio player that guided them through the museum but apparently the museum had been updated since then. We first went into a room with photographs taken at the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in Washington D.C. Sadly, this room of photographs was never allowed to be published into recently.
We began our tour learning about how slaves were brought to the country and who benefited from their labor. We'd spent a lot of time on this subject in our studies and I was glad the kids recognized and remembered much of what we'd learned. Next we went to a movie about the Jim Crow laws to learn more about life in the 1950s and 1960s. As we walked out Grammie began to talk to the kids about her experiences growing up in that time frame. The kids couldn't believe some of what they were reading and hearing.
The museum was now set up in a way to provide a full history building up to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. There were many events I'd never even heard of that played big parts in the movement. The kids were especially interested in the integration of the schools and how the children were treated.
We spent the next few hours reading and learning all about the events and what it was like to grow up in this time of prejudice, hate, and violence. There aren't really words to describe the shock and sadness I felt going through this museum. I don't think the kids felt it quite as much as they were skimming the exhibits in the rooms after about halfway. 
The end of the museum details the last day in Martin Luther King, Jr's life and you are led to a display of the actual rooms where he was staying when he was shot. Everyone was silent as they read the timeline of the day hour by hour and looked into the room where they'd been sitting there talking and joking that day.
We exited the museum to another area with exhibits of current day issues and displays of winners of the Civil Rights Museum's Freedom Awards. We didn't spend too much time here as we were already over our time I'd told Dave we would take. I took a quick picture of the outside of the museum showing the hotel rooms and original cars parked there.
We all grabbed a quick snack and hopped back into the car for our hour drive to our next campsite. We were back in Arkansas for a night before making our way closer to home. We arrived to a mostly empty campground and set up pretty quickly. There was quite a bit of mud around our spot so we decided to just set up one tent on the gravel so we would be sleeping with two stinky girls.
We were nestled high up off of a lake in our own private little loop. After a quick dinner we played about 4 minutes of camp ball before it just got too dark. We promised the kids we would play in the morning as we didn't have much of a rush to get anywhere for the rest of the trip.
We decided instead to play some cards for a little while on the picnic table. At one point I thought Lola had fallen off the edge of the small cliff until I saw instead she'd treed a raccoon that was now peering at me halfway up the tree. The kids sung their "awwwwws" and we retired to the RV to get away from the bugs. After a few more rounds of cards we retired to the tent with the girls for the night.
