All products featured on Condé Nast Traveler are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
All listings featured in this story are independently selected by our editors. However, when you book something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
“What the hell am I doing?” I texted my best friend while en route to Newark Airport. “This has to be the weirdest idea I’ve ever had.” It was a Wednesday morning in mid-August, and I was heading to Memphis, Tennessee, to visit Graceland for my birthday alone.
This decision was out of character for me because, before this year, my birthday was the day I most looked forward to. It was always a big to-do, and to celebrate, I’d typically plan some elaborate party or festive dinner, surrounded by friends and family. And, although this year wasn’t a particularly important date—the big 3-0 is still a few years off—blowing out the candles with my loved ones somehow felt more necessary than ever, as I worked through the aftermath of a bad breakup.
But as August 18 quickly approached, I discovered many of my friends would be out of town on my big day. It seemed I would, for the first time in my life, be spending my birthday by myself. I played out the scene in my head and decided that staying in New York, where I live, was a recipe for disaster, but I wasn’t sure what else I could do. Then, like a knockout punch from Elvis in “Kid Galahad,” it hit me: I would take myself to Graceland.
In Memphis, Tennessee, Graceland was home to Elvis Presley for more than two decades, after he purchased the property in 1957 at the ripe age of 22. It’s where he invited his parents and grandparents to live with him; it’s where he and his wife, Priscilla, hosted friends and raised their daughter; it’s where countless hits were performed and recorded; and it’s where the King eventually died in 1977 and was laid to rest soon after.
The historic home was opened to the public five years after his death and now functions as a museum dedicated to the life and career of Elvis, complete with an on-property hotel. I would be one of over 500,000 annual visitors, both die-hard fans and the vaguely curious, who come from every corner of the globe—it’s among the most-visited homes in the United States, second only to the White House.
Visiting Graceland had always been high on my bucket list. While most people my age were dreaming of a weekend trip to Paris, all I wanted to do was spend the day at a dead guy's house, surrounded by a bunch of 70-somethings.
I had my reasons. Growing up, Elvis was one of many musicians I gravitated toward, but it wasn’t until I was cast in a production of “Bye Bye Birdie” in sixth grade that I combed through his entire catalog of films and downloaded every one of his records. By the end of the school year, at age 11, I had fallen totally, head-over-heels in love. My friends teased me, and my parents dismissed it as a teenage crush, but I begged to differ: it was much more than that. There was a phase in which I carried a photo of Elvis in my wallet, and I even performed “All Shook Up” with an Elvis impersonator at my Las Vegas-themed Bat Mitzvah (while wearing full Elvis regalia, of course).
But my light-hearted obsession with the King’s music and movies took on new significance for me a few years later, when my younger brother unexpectedly passed away at age six. He had shared my love of Elvis, albeit to a slightly lesser degree, and we’d spent many evenings singing and dancing to “Burning Love.” In the wake of his death, I found myself reaching for Elvis’s songs in a new way. I later realized that whenever I was faced with a challenge, I could turn to Elvis to get me through. I played “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” on repeat after my first heartbreak, and think of my brother whenever I hear “Lord Almighty, feel my temperature rising” blaring through speakers.
It seemed only fitting that I would seek Elvis’s company on this new cornerstone of adulthood.
Flash forward from a check-in at The Guest House at Graceland, to a shuttle past the estate's famous gates loaded with messages for The King, and I was at Elvis’s front door in the dead of August—with a pair of headphones playing an audio tour narrated by massive Elvis fan John Stamos.
I pushed past the overcrowded foyer, Stamos whispering into my ears, and began to absorb it all. In the living room, a gorgeous white grand piano flooded my imagination with images of Elvis serenading his friends and family. In the dining room, I saw Elvis and Priscilla’s wedding china, which still sits atop the table, before passing the famed staircase to Elvis’s private living quarters, which remain closed to visitors today as they were when he was alive. In the kitschy Jungle Room, with its eclectic, tropical furnishings inspired by Elvis’s time in Hawaii—like a built-in waterfall, and green shag carpet on both the floor and ceiling—I saw where the musician spent most of his time and even recorded the bulk of his last two albums.
As I wandered through Graceland’s other structures, like the trophy building which houses endless halls of Presley memorabilia, and the racquetball building, where Elvis added a custom court to the property in 1975, I was in genuine awe. First, of the sheer spectacle of how this man lived, but also the immense weight his life carried for so many others. I wasn't unique in my unbridled love of the man.
While gawking at hundreds of bedazzled jumpsuits, and indulging in photo opps I’d usually deride—including an AR-powered photo booth that placed me on Elvis’s iconic movie posters—I quickly befriended other visitors, some of whom were there for the 17th or 18th time.
By a stroke of luck, I was born a mere two days—and 19 years—after Elvis died, so going to Graceland for my birthday also meant overlapping with Elvis Week, a celebration held every year on the anniversary of his death. As I entered the hotel banquet room for the annual Farewell Party on the night of my birthday, feathers, sequins, and bright lights all around, I spotted a familiar face from earlier in the day: an Ohio woman named Tamara, who came to Elvis Week every year. I joined her for a hearty Southern meal and an animated performance by an Elvis Tribute Artist, before sojourning to the movie theater for a screening of “Viva Las Vegas.” As the crowd hooted and hollered when a young Elvis graced the big screen and sang along to his musical flirtations with Ann-Margret, I knew I was right to come to Graceland alone. I no longer felt the absence of my family and friends; I had certainly found my people, at least for the day.
I had also, for the first time in a long time, done something completely and utterly for myself. I didn’t look to the people in my life to share my love of Elvis or even affirm it, and I didn’t feel disappointed when they, inevitably, didn’t get it.
I may have arrived in Memphis alone, uncertain of what the day would hold, and worried that I’d made a terrible mistake, but I left with a renewed sense of self—not to mention a few Elvis t-shirts and some outrageous souvenir photos picked up along the way.
