Road Trip, Day 14 - Memphis, Tennessee

The second week of our road trip was centered around the National Harp Conference in New Orleans.  After the conference and some sight seeing in Louisiana, we started heading north to visit family in Missouri.  However, the drive from Thibodaux, Louisiana to my Aunt's home in Missouri was longer than we like to do in one day.  We broke up the trip into sections that would keep our driving down to no more than five to seven hours per day.  So, for this part of the trip, Memphis was a perfect place to stop.  We'd heard about the famous Beale Street but when we heard that the famous Peabody Ducks were also in Memphis, we were excited about going to Memphis.  I got a hotel room right across from the Peabody Hotel to be sure we could get there easily and on time so we wouldn't miss them.  The hotel was also a short walk from Beale Street.

We arrived about an hour and a half before the ducks were to make their famous march.  We quickly checked into our hotel, loaded our things in, and walked over to the Peabody Hotel.  It was right across the street.  Look what else was right across the street...a line of carriages just waiting for passengers. 

The Peabody Hotel was rather plain from the outside but very pretty on the inside.

It was also bustling with people waiting to see the ducks.

There it is...the famous fountain right in the middle of the lobby.

And, there are those famous ducks swimming around...

There's the "Duck Master" rolling out the red carpet...

Here's a short video of the ducks getting out of the fountain.  Unfortunately, I had so many photos on my phone from the trip that it ran out of memory and couldn't record the whole event.  Oops!

But, I did catch a few photos with my regular camera...

The march of the Peabody Ducks was fun to see.  It's a tradition that started in the 1930's.

For more about this fun and interesting tradition, HERE's a link to their website.

After the ducks finished their march and headed up the elevator to their cozy little home on the roof for the night, we headed over to Beale Street to check it out.

The main/tourist part of it is only a couple blocks long.  It's filled with bars, restaurants, and tourist shops.  It's a party destination much like the French Quarter of New Orleans but this street did NOT smell bad like Bourbon Street and much of the French Quarter.  And, it was well policed.  They even had it closed off to cars for the evening.

Shortly after walking over there, it began to rain and eventually pour!

It made for a pretty picture with the lights reflecting on the street.

I managed to get some photos before it started to rain hard though.

There was a lot of neon and lots of fun signs.

Here are a few...

The famous "Coyote Ugly" bar was just a small, hole-in-the-wall place...

I took photos of this place for my dad as he's always been a fan of Jerry Lee Lewis.

There was an "Elvis" inside singing when we went by.

We had to have some Memphis BBQ while we were there!  In fact, I'd done research and picked out a place that was supposed to be really good and was famous.  However, I'd left the info in the car and it was valet parked.  That was too much trouble to retrieve the info.  So, we went with this place on Beale Street...

It was good but the BBQ we had in Texas still wins...it was the best.

We even had Kansas City BBQ later in the trip and still liked Texas BBQ best!

The rain really dumped and the sky was flashing and rumbling.  So, heading back to the hotel seemed to be the smartest thing to do.  Thank goodness we'd brought our umbrellas!  We were still soaked by the time we got back to the hotel, but the cameras survived!  Whew!

It continued to dump rain all night long.  It was raining so hard by the next morning that we could barely see the neighboring sky scrapers!  I checked the radar and it was not only orange and red but brown!  Brown?!  I'd never seen that before!  We had planned to leave by sunrise but it just didn't seem safe.  So, we waited and waited and finally felt safe to leave around 10 a.m. for our drive to Missouri.  We drove through a lot of rain that day but it eventually stopped and we even saw sun for a while.  The drive through Arkansas and Southern Missouri was beautiful!  Next stop and post...my aunt's home on Lake of the Ozarks!