Two Days in Memphis with Kids and Teens

travel dates: June, 2022

As I write these first few posts about our summer 2022 trip, I’m writing not only a travelogue, but also a serialized short story about our assorted van woes. Which is why this post is not called THREE days in Memphis with Kids and Teens. We were in Memphis for three days, but one of those days was spent at the campground trying to figure out why the van wouldn’t start, even though assorted Auto Zone’s told us the battery was just fine.

A couple of days and a few jump starts later, a mechanic in West Memphis told us our trouble was nothing more complicated than some loose connections at the battery. He tightened them up, charged us $30, and sent us on our way. Was he correct?! Well, he seemed to be for a few days anyway. More on that in another post!

We stayed at the Tom Sawyer RV Park in West Memphis, and we very much enjoyed it, but I’ve just written two campground reviews in a row, so I’m starting off with what we did in Memphis.

Memphis is also where Ari left us for his summer job, doing math research at Iowa State University. We felt bad that the few days of the trip he was able to join us for were tainted by van troubles. Sorry, Ari!

Maybe this is just me, but “should we go to Graceland?!” strikes me as the quintessential question one must answer when planning a trip to Memphis. We did not go to Graceland on this trip. I went there once in college, and Ari and I went by ourselves on our way to a college visit a few years ago:

I love Graceland, and I think everyone should probably go there at least once. But Graceland is EXPENSIVE. Like Disney level expensive, but without any rides except the shuttle bus to the mansion. It would have cost $430 for our family of 6 to visit (the lowest ticket price that includes a tour of the actual mansion). And we had a few other big ticket experiences on our summer itinerary (ones that were likely to be of greater interest to the youngsters in our party), so Graceland lost out this year.

So here’s what we did do:

Peabody Duck March

We were all very excited about this, for obvious reasons (those reasons being ducks), but it turned out to be a little underwhelming. These ducks live in a fancy enclosure on the roof of the Peabody Hotel in downtown Memphis, and every day at 11 they come down to play in the fountain in the lobby and then they head back up at 5. The public is invited to come and observe this spectacle, and they do, in great numbers.

The Peabody recommends arriving at least 30 minutes before duck march time, and we left ourselves plenty of time. We had been a little nervous about parking downtown with the van, but it was pretty easy to find street parking a short walk away. I think we were there a good 45 minutes in advance and had staked out front row seats. The problem with this was that our front row seats (not actually seats; we were standing) didn’t stay front row seats. Hotel employees kept coming by and moving people around and putting up ropes as barriers and then moving them elsewhere, so that we didn’t end up with a very good view at all by the time the ducks actually arrived. It’s a very cramped space. Kids are allowed to sit up front, but Abe was suffering from some crowd-provoked grumpiness and did not enjoy his special view much. Also grown-ups who wandered up late and didn’t realize it was supposed to be just for kids ended up in that space. Probably there are times when the duck march isn’t so crowded and things are better, but the whole process of getting there early and trying to hold on to decent duck viewing spots stressed me out.

A few minutes before duck time, the Duck Master shows up and tells everyone a LOT of stuff about the whole history of ducks at the Peabody. Unfortunately, it’s pretty hard to hear him unless you’re standing right by him, which we were not. But even from our vantage point I could tell that Duck Master is the greatest job ever:

And then it is finally duck time! And…the ducks walk on the carpet and go get in the fountain, and that’s it. So I mean…it’s probably worth doing once for the novelty. But! We came back later in the day to see the ducks frolicking in the fountain, and that was pretty great. There were no crowds, and the ducks were doing way cuter things than just walking. So that’s my recommendation; watch the duck march if you feel compelled, but visiting the ducks at some point during fountain time is a better experience:

Memphis Museum of Science and History/Pink Palace

This was one of those “we weren’t really sure what to expect” places, and it turns out that’s because you should expect a little bit of everything. There’s a science section, with a lot of natural history stuff (dinosaurs!)

Including this scary animatronic one:

There’s a history section, with lots of old school mannequin type guys to tell you about the history of Memphis:

Abe especially like the small section with hands on science exhibits:

The Pink Palace section of the museum is the house built by Clarence Saunders, founder of Piggly Wiggly. He never lived in the house himself, though, as he lost his fortune before it was completed, and it’s been a museum since the 1930’s. It’s called the Pink Palace because it’s covered with pink marble. Now this original part of the museum houses some of the older exhibits:

A miniature circus which you can see in operation a couple of times a day:

And a great Piggly-Wiggly specific section where you can tour an old fashioned general store (and complete a scavenger hunt):

And then tour a model of one of the first Piggly-Wigglys…the first modern supermarkets:

Admission is $18 for adults and $13 for kids (the museum also participates in the ASTC reciprocal program, so we got in free with our membership to our local science museum).

Bass Pro Shop Pyramid

We went back and forth about whether to visit the Bass Pro Shop Pyramid, since it’s basically…a store. But it’s also, much like the ducks, a spectacle, and I’m always up for a good spectacle. Plus we kept driving right by it on our way to and from our campground. So on our way back to the trailer after a day of touring, we stopped by for an overpriced elevator ride.

The pyramid in Memphis (get it? because like Memphis in Egypt?!) was built in 1991 as an arena and originally played host to events of all sorts, like basketball games and concerts. But in 2015 it began its new life as a Bass Pro Shop, and now one can wander inside the enormous structure, buying sporting goods and fudge, playing arcade shooting games, visiting with the fish at the aquarium, eating at the restaurants or staying at the hotel, or…paying $8 a head to ride “the world’s largest freestanding elevator.”

You might be getting the impression that I didn’t feel like our elevator ride was money well spent. I will do nothing to dispel this impression.

The store itself is ridiculously elaborately themed and somewhat overwhelming:

I wouldn’t mind staying in the hotel some day so that I could observe it all while having a place to escape.

The views from the platform are nice, but not amazing:

There’s also a restaurant up top (presumably you don’t have to pay for the elevator if you have a reservation for the elevator). Incidentally, it was surprisingly crowded when we were there; it was tough to find parking despite the giant parking lot, and we waited quite awhile for the elevator.

National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel

As we approached the National Civil Rights Museum, we noticed a woman sitting across the street with a table set up and a bunch of signs about gentrification. We didn’t think much of it until she shouted at us as we walked by, “it’s not a children’s museum!” Dave talked to her a bit, and her argument against taking Abe to the museum seemed to be that, essentially, learning about racism would inspire him to be racist himself. I…disagree. But I googled after we got back to the trailer that evening, and it turns out the woman has a story. 

Her name is Jacqueline Smith, and she was the last resident of the Lorraine Motel (where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated) before she was evicted in 1988 to make way for the Civil Rights Museum. And she’s been protesting outside the museum ever since: every day for more than 30 years. Despite her conversation with Dave, the museum turning kids into racists doesn’t seem to be her primary concern. Instead, she thinks the money put into the museum would have better served Dr. King’s legacy had it been used to improve the lives of disadvantaged people in Memphis. Also that the museum fetishizes death by preserving the site of and some relics from Dr. King’s assassination and putting too much of an emphasis on his death rather than his life and mission.

So. I don’t know. I appreciate free speech and perseverance, and it gave me–an avid museum goer!–a lot to think about.

I didn’t know any of that when we visited the museum, though.

The museum is surprisingly extensive, with exhibits about the history of the civil rights movement in America, from slavery through the 20th century.

It was all nicely done and well presented (and in a way that was appropriate and accessible to kids, despite the warning), although some of it felt a little like I’d seen it before elsewhere. Sometimes because we literally had seen it before. They have a reproduction of Rosa Parks’ bus, but we’d seen the actual bus just last summer at the Henry Ford in Michigan:

The museum was at its best when it got more specific and personal. There’s an extensive exhibit about the sanitation workers’ strike that brought Dr. King to Memphis–that was something that I knew very little about, and this museum is uniquely positioned to tell that story. And the last exhibit that takes you through Dr. King’s final hours and where you can see that part of the hotel preserved just as it was was the most moving part (do we fetishize death? Maybe? When someone dies tragically and unexpectedly, it’s true that that’s a lot of what we focus on. Dying is a big part of being human, though; I’m not sure there’s any way around it).

Loflin Yard

Particularly in these troubled times, I’m always on the look out for restaurants with great outdoor seating options (in fact, I’ve gotten where I actually prefer eating outside at restaurants, which is not how I felt in the before times). We really loved the outside space at Loflin Yard, a short drive from downtown.

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