Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Graceland is an amazing place, or so I hear.
As the former home of legendary entertainer Elvis Presley, it’s a must-see destination for his millions of fans. Located on the outskirts of this amazing Southern city — where many of my relatives, including my brand new granddaughter, reside — some 650,000 people a year visit The King’s mansion.
But I’ve never actually been there. I’ve been visiting family in Memphis for most of my life and yet I’ve never been to Graceland.
Isn’t that the way “locals” are everywhere?
I lived in Nashville for most of a decade, and most of the locals I knew had never been to the Grand Ole Opry.
I grew up in Arkansas, but have yet to visit Bill Clinton’s Presidential Library, even though I lived in Little Rock while he was being elected to the nation’s highest office.
And I’ve been in and out of Santa Fe without ever even thinking about going to the “world-renowned” Santa Fe Opera.
I’ll bet if we took a poll, we’d find less than half of Santa Rosa’s residents have ever jumped into the Blue Hole. Feel free to prove me wrong on that with an imaginary poll of your own.
My point is, local residents don’t always see their “famous attractions” as must-experience destinations. Those are for the visitors.
How many New Mexicans do you think have been to Carlsbad Caverns, which pulls in several hundred thousand tourists a year? Or the White Sands National Monument, an incredible gem of a park with more gypsum sand dunes than anywhere else in the world? Or the infamous Billy the Kid’s gravesite outside Fort Sumner?
I know some of you have visited many of New Mexico’s attractions, but I’d be surprised if even a quarter of our state’s population has been to these and other sites across our aptly named “Land of Enchantment.”
I guess when a family thinks about touring, they think about getting away from their familiar surroundings.
Or, in places like “Music City U.S.A.” (Nashville), they know that the best places to go in town are in the nightclubs and bars where up-and-coming musicians entertain boisterous crowds, not at the touristy Ryman Auditorium or the “new” Grand Ole Opry stage on the outskirts of the city.
Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at:
