Quick Trip to TN

We had plans to head to Atlanta this weekend but with a forecast of 100% chance of snow on Friday, we quickly changed our plans. We did a 180* and headed northwest to Memphis instead.

We started our trip at the Pink Palace Museum; I think our favorite exhibit was Chocolate as well as the Cultural History of the Mid-South (esp 19th century since that is our History focus this year) and the planetarium show Nine Planets and Counting.  As seems to happen on many of our excursions, we had Thai for dinner since it wasn't overcrowded like so many other restaurants in town.

Saturday morning didn't get off to a good start; a child that shall remain nameless woke us all up before 6am. We then discovered that the hot water tank at the Residence Inn was only large enough for 2 fast showers (alas there were 5 of us). The only answer we were given by maintenance was to wait 15 minutes between showers - we are not a family to sit around a hotel, we get up and get going to see and do things so that was not an adequate solution. We checked out of the hotel after we ate the free breakfast.

We started our day at the Memphis Zoo. That excursion started out iffy since all the big cats were inside off exhibit because it was supposedly below 40* even though we were not at all cold in our regular winter coats with no mittens or other extras. Heck, even the penguins were not outside. But we continued onward and saw lots and lots of animals - especially enjoyed the baby giraffe (only a few weeks old) and the giant pandas....by the time we circled around the big cats and penguins were released to enjoy the beautiful sunshiny day.

We then ventured downtown but took a detour over the Mississippi (on purpose) so that the children could go to Arkansas (they'd never been ) and then we went to see the Peabody Ducks  - last time we were there John and Theresa weren't born but just like last time we were not there for the march but we did get to see them swimming in the lobby fountain. We had a very late lunch and then decided to head home since we now had no hotel room and there was more bad weather predicted for Sunday night (our original plans).