Vacation: days 8-10

Days 8-10 of our trip included Nashville, then Memphis, and finally a 6-hour drive home.  In order to save money in Nashville, we found a great deal where we spent $50/adult and got to pick five attractions out of a list of a dozen or so. We chose to ride the city tour trolley as one "attraction" and then visit the Grand Ole Opry, the Ryman Auditorium, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, and the Nashville Parthenon. By doing this we saved over 50%. Ya to the hoo. And now, a Ryman/Hall of Fame compilation followed by a Grand Ole Opry collage:

We loved visiting the best attractions of Music City USA, but unfortunately we aren't big enough country music fans to really appreciate all the history and grandeur of these places.  We got to sing from the wooden circle in the Opry which apparently is pretty awesome.  We sang "You Are My Sunshine."  Go us.
 
The trolley tour and parthenon were more our style.  We loved touring the city while getting information about the history of Nashville, and the parthenon (which is the only full-scale replica of the Greek parthenon in the world) was just amazing.  Emerson fell asleep on the trolley and snoozed through almost the whole visit to the parthenon. 
 

 

From Nashville, we drove to Memphis for the last leg of our trip.  Memphis was a very laid back stop for us.  We didn't have any major plans and most of what we did was just observing. 

A quick stop at the temple with my handsome buff Fanta-man:

We took a trip to Beale Street because you have to if you're in Memphis. We even went to eat at a highly recommended restaurant called Rum Boogie.

Their online menu looked fantastic and we couldn't wait to get some good eats. We walked up to the door and I proceeded to get myself into an embarrassing moment.

{love those}

The kid out front said to me, "It's a 21-and-over restaurant." And I, in all my naivity came right out and said, "Don't I look 21?" and at the same time realized that I had a child with me and he was actually referring to him rather than me.

Whoops.  I hurriedly tried to laugh it off and mumble out something clever while practically pushing Will into the road to cross the street. Don't worry. Now I know that some places don't let kids in. We ended up at Cracker Barrel which is indeed children-friendly. 

Aftwerwards, we got to see the Peabody Ducks.  The Peabody Hotel is a luxury hotel in downtown Memphis. The hotel is very well known for the famous Peabody Ducks that live on the hotel rooftop, but which make a trek each day to the lobby's main fountain.  They have a red carpet to walk on and get photographed as if they were celebrities.

In the afternoon we went to the Mud Island River Park.  This was one of my favorite stops because it was adventurous, relaxing, and free.  Boo-ya.  This park (on a very small island in the Mississippi River between AK and TN) is a smaller replica of the Mississippi River as it flows through the 1000-mile journey to the Gulf of Mexico. The model is a giant jigsaw puzzle made up of slabs of concrete that hold 1,200,000 gallons of water.  State borders and cities are represented on the concrete sculpture where horizontally, 30 inches equals one mile and vertically, one inch equals eight feet.  The whole representation is one half mile.

 Mud Island as it is represented in the model:

Before heading back home the next morning, we all had some good fun with balloons at the hotel.  Our hotel was actually over the river in West Memphis, Arkansas. 

Once we got home, unloaded all our stuff, returned the rental car, and turned on the A/C (our house was 89 degrees when we got home - yuck), we pretty much did nothing .  Luckily we built in an extra day to recoup from the vaca so we could clean up and relax.  Our trip was fantastic and we loved it all.  After calculating all our receipts, we did a lot better than expected.  We spent less than $150/day which includes hotel, food, attractions, rental car, and gas.  We paid for our souvenirs with gift cards I received from work before quitting.  We would definitely attempt our own road trip again since we had such a great time.  Our trip was fantastic and we loved it all.