I woke at 8.30 one Friday morning in a pitch-black hotel room, slipped on a robe, pulled back the curtains between me and my balcony and stepped out for a stunning Memphis view: Hundreds of people ambling through the aisles of a Bass Pro Shops store.
It wasn’t just any Bass Pro Shops outlet. It was the world’s largest, and the only one housed in a big, shiny pyramid along the Mississippi River where the floor is packed with things such as fishing poles, guns, sunglasses, boats floating in water, fake cypress trees, real alligators, the tallest free-standing elevator in North America and, of course, camouflage for men, women and children of all shapes and sizes.