We decided to stay about 20 miles outside of Memphis on Saturday, the 25th - nice motel with no problems. I expected to see a lot of Navy personnel, since there is Naval Air Station there in Millington, but didn't. We arrived in late afternoon and just decided to hang out in our room until dinnertime. We drove to a nearby Perkins for dinner, then back to our room to lay around again.
Sunday morning I went to a very nice church, Anchor Baptist Church, in Millington - good service, small church, very nice people. Afterward, I went back to the motel to pick Mike up, and we were off to Mud Island River Park. This is a great park that has an exact scale model of the Mississippi River from Cairo, Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico, complete with all its twists and turns. There is a sky bridge you can walk across into downtown Memphis - or you can take the monorail across. I think most of you can guess that this was definitely not a walk I would take. I could probably have handled the monorail, but we chose not to take it. We did go up to the top floor of the museum building, although not too close to the edge. After leaving the park, we drove by the Pyramid Arena - the 6th largest pyramid in the world. While it is an impressive building, it could not be nearly as awe-inspiring as the original pyramids, built solely by man-power, would be to see.
I have wanted to see the Peabody Ducks since I first heard about them, so off we went to find the Peabody Hotel. We were fortunate enough to find a parking spot only 2 blocks away and walked over to the hotel. There were a carriages parked in front of the hotel - I kind of wish we had taken a ride. The horses and carriages were really nice, but I was on a mission - had to see the ducks. There are 5 mallard ducks that live on the rooftop of the hotel in their very own "palace". Every day at 11 AM they ride down in the elevator and march to the fountain with the Duckmaster - at 5 PM they reverse their route and return to the rooftop. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see the duck march, but we saw them in the fountain. Made my day!
We didn't make it to Graceland - drove by, but the area was so congested that we just decided it wasn't that important to us. Instead, we decided we'd do our laundry before dinner. I cannot begin to tell you how much I have not missed laundromats! Other than going to IHOP for dinner, we were pretty much done for the day.
This morning, Sept 27, we decided to visit the Memphis Zoo on our way to Nashville. We both really enjoyed this zoo - unlike some of the zoos we visited in California, it only cost us $14 each to get in. The first exhibits we visited were the big kitties - there was a gorgeous white tiger. I don't believe I've ever seen one before. We saw meerkats, assorted primates, otters, elephants, a rhino, a hippo and best of all, 2 giant pandas! They were really cute, but were having naps. I almost forgot - we also saw red pandas,which look entirely different from the big black and white pandas. The polar bear was pretty boring - if you really want to see some cool polar bears, go to the Pt Defiance Zoo - they're amazing! All in all, we were glad that we stopped here.
On the way to Nashville, we stopped for a bite to eat. The place was supposed to be a gas station/truck stop/restaurant/deli/trading post - what a strange place this was. We ordered cheeseburgers and then waited nearly half an hour. We also each had a soda, but when she hadn't written them on our check, she told us to just tell them at the front what we had. Weird! This place was huge and had so much "stuff" - it would be impossible to every inventory it all. It was like a giant storeroom - the way it was all spread out, I would imagine that they have a lot of pilferage, but they probably wouldn't be able to tell.
We arrived in Nashville, tired from the drive, but anxious to explore the area tomorrow. We even had dinner delivered to our motel room - had some pretty decent spaghetti and meatballs. Don't know what we'll see tomorrow, but I will keep you posted!
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