October 28…. Duck!

Busy day today, so much to see and do around here.

We started on another rails-to-trails hike, this time on a mile-long bridge across the Mississippi, crossing from Arkansas to Tennessee and back.

Our next stop was Mud Island in Memphis. It’s a nice park, but they have the coolest thing… a scale model of the entire Mississippi River watershed. All the way from Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico, including all the major tributaries along the way, the Ohio, Tennessee, and Missouri Rivers. All of it done with accurate contours and stretching over a HALF MILE!

They pipe water through the model to mimic the actual flow in the rivers, and you can see how the flood controls would work and get an idea of how backups in one area could affect another. Way cool, if you’re kind of a geek. 😉. I liked it.

On our hike to start the day, we had a view of downtown Memphis, including a huge pyramid so that’s where we go next.

The pyramid was built in 1991 as an event arena, hosting several sports teams and some concerts, until a better venue was built. By some accounts, this is the tenth largest pyramid in the world. 😮

In 2010, the city finally reached an agreement with Bass Pro Shops, and the pyramid was turned into a Bass Pro mega-store, including shopping, a lodge, indoor shooting and archery ranges, and multiple fish and alligator aquariums.

There’s even an elevator to the top of the pyramid to an observation deck and restaurant.

Afterwards, we cruised around downtown, just doing some exploring to prep for the rest of the week, before finally coming to a stop at the Peabody Hotel.

The original Peabody was opened in 1869, and was the nicest (at the time) hotel in Memphis. Among its guests were Presidents Andrew Johnson and William McKinley, and Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

The hotel was closed in 1923 and reopened in its new building a block away in 1925.

Anyway…. the most famous thing about the place today are the ducks.

Back in the 1930’s, a practical joke which turned into a tradition started by having ducks swimming in the fountain in the lounge of the hotel. A bellhop in 1940 trained them to get out of the fountain and waddle into the elevator, where he would take them up to a pen on the roof. He became the first Duckmaster and the tradition has continued to this day. He brings them down in the morning, they swim all day, and he takes them up in the evening.

We arrived at the hotel to take part in The Peabody Duck March. 😆

All in a good day. We enjoyed touristy things and contributed to the economy of historic Memphis.

I do have to add… parking is CHEAP here. Plenty of places where my truck fits just fine, and it’s about a dollar an hour here. Not like our fiasco the first day in Seattle. 😡