Day 56 (Thursday, August 19th) Memphis, Tennessee

We're sorry about the gap in our blog, but we'd like to thank those who noticed and called to ask if we were alright. We're fine, but we broke the card-reader that reads the card from John's camera. That was more than half of our photos, so we decided to pause until we replaced it. We're back up and running so here goes..........we'd already written the text so we'll just add the photos and pretend that we're still on schedule.

With memories of Graceland still fresh in our minds, we headed out today to see what Memphis had to offer. We started our day by taking the momorail out to Mud Island. There is a wonderful museum of the Mississippi River on the island. We spent a couple of hours wandering through the museum and then went outside to walk along the scale model of the Mississippi. The models is hundreds of yards long and shows great detail. You can even see where the river is wide and shallow and where it gets narrow and deep. It's full of water and Jake and Tyler had a great time wading through the water and racing leaves on the current. The various cities along the river are akso created (to scale) on the deck. We had fun finding where our camper was parked, both in Memphis and in New Orleans, weeks earlier. Near the end of the island the model river spills out into models of the delta and the Gulf of Mexico. Even Laker Ponchartrain is there at the side of New Orleans.

After we left Mud Island, we walked over to the riverboat tours that run nearby. We spent about 90 minutes on a narrated tour of the river on a stern-wheeler paddle-boat. I'm pretty sure it had propellers underneath, but the paddle wheel did turn as we went along. The narrator provided us with interesting history of Memphis and the Mississippi River and made it worth our time. We learned about the greatest maritime disaster that ever occurred in the U.S. We'd never known that is was a riverboat (the Sultana) returning repatriated Union Civil War soldiers after the war ended. One of it's boilers exploded and more than 1,500 Union soldiers were killed or drowned as it sank.

For the highlight of our day we walked up to the Peabody Hotel in down town Memphis. That's right! We attended the parade of the Peabody Ducks. It's quite a grand presentation with a "Duck Master" and a red carpet that gets rolled out from the fountain to the elevator that takes the ducks to the duck palace on the roof. Right on time, the ducks climbed out of the lobby fountain that they'd been swimming in since their morning parade and waddled down the carpet to the elevator. After a short while we followed to the roof and got some excellent looks at the city as well and a brief "gander" at where the ducks live when they're not on display in the fountain.

By the time the ducks were safety in their palace, it was time to head down to Beale Street. A short walk had us strolling along the birthplace of the "blues." We listened to some of the live music and found a barbecue place to have dinner. After another lap of Beale Street we headed home for the night. Tomorrow, we'll head for Nashville and country music.