Boarding Elvis' personal jet, the Lisa Marie, is an experience not to be missed when visiting Graceland. Anna takes us aboard the Lisa Marie to close out a wonderful tour of Graceland, accompanied by her very own Dr Pepper can.In 1975, Elvis purchased a Convair 880 jet that had just been taken out of service by Delta Airlines; he spent another $350,000 to have it refurbished by the design team of Air Force One. Elvis named the plane the Lisa Marie after his daughter, but he also called the jet "Hound Dog One" and his "Flying Graceland."
Elvis used the plane to fly in style to his concert locations. However, one of the more interesting stories associated with the plane involved Elvis and some friends making a late-night food run halfway across the country.
As the story is recounted, Elvis was entertaining some lawmen from Denver in the Jungle Room at Graceland one night and told them of a sandwich called the Fool's Gold Loaf that he had eaten in Denver after a tour date. The Fool's Gold Loaf sandwich consisted of a single warmed, hollowed out loaf of bread filled with one jar of Skippy creamy peanut butter, one jar of Smucker's grape jelly and a pound of bacon. The price of the sandwich at that time was a whopping $49.95. Elvis began craving the taste of the sandwich so he instructed the pilots of the Lisa Marie to get the plane ready to fly to Denver. The plane landed at Denver's Stapleton Airport and was taken to a private hangar. There 22 Fool's Gold Sandwiches awaited Elvis and his entourage. They spent three hours eating the sandwiches in Denver and then flew back to Memphis.
