My June Vacation in September - The Final Chapter!

The last thing my sister and I did in Memphis was to visit Mud Island Park.  Not a super impressive-sounding name, is it?

One of the headwater walls.

I had read an article many many moons ago about the park not long after it first opened and thought it sounded fascinating.  The main attraction (to my geeky mind) is the outdoor scale model of the Mississippi River.  There are walls that depict the headwaters of each tributary of the Mississippi, and channels (in concrete) of the great river itself.

An example of oxbow bends in the model channel. 

You can see where the river is deeper or shallower, wider or narrower.  Water flows through the river model, first cascading down the headwater walls, then through the river model, and exiting into the delta and Gulf of Mexico!  Cities show up as slate-colored slabs along the riverbanks and are labeled so you know where you are.

This is Memphis!

 A bridge!

It's a dam!

We were amazed by the intricacy of the model.  The entire display stretches about 0.7 mile along the river.  There's an actual indoor museum at the north end of the park, but we didn't go inside.

The delta end of the "river" is kind of overgrown in places, but according to a sign along the way, the park is undergoing renovations, and we saw evidence of that - some new bricks along the walkway, some newer concrete here and there, some areas where cattails had been removed.  The park opened on July 4, 1982, so it's about time.

The delta end of the "river."

We spent quite a bit of time at Mud Island.  Just think, you can walk from one end of the Mississippi River to the other in just an hour or two, depending on how many of the descriptive signs you stop to read.  Who dreamed up this crazy miniature Mississippi?  And how did they convince the city to build it?  It's an amazing endeavor, and worth seeing.

Here we are!  Farewell to Memphis!

My June Vacation in September (Part 5) - More Memphis!

Christmas slowed me down, but you just can't get rid of me!

After spending our first evening in Memphis at the Peabody, we wanted something completely different.  So we went to the Bass Pro Shops in the Pyramid, the old home arena for the NBA Memphis Grizzlies before they moved to the FedEx Forum in 2004.

The exterior is clad in stainless steel!

We'd seen it from the interstate on our way to Hot Springs, Arkansas - you can't miss it!  The Pyramid is a 6/10 replica of the Great Pyramid of Cheops.  At 321 feet tall it's the third largest pyramid in the world and dominates the Memphis skyline.

Here I am trying out the laser
shooting gallery.

A view of the main floor from the second level.

Big Cedar Lodge rooms overlook
the "swamp."

Some of the game fist that
swim through the "swamp."

The first thing we did when we got inside was to ask for a MAP.  The place is overwhelming, and that's the only way you'll find your way around your first visit.  Inside are a Big Cedar Lodge hotel, laser rifle shooting gallery, three restaurants, bowling alley, Ducks Unlimited Waterfowling Heritage Center, archery range, pistol range, and the world's tallest free-standing elevator. 

Most of the first level is made to look like a cypress swamp.  Boats are displayed floating at docks in the swamp.  Most of the hotel's rooms have screened balconies overlooking the swamp.  Water flows in streams through the swamp and there are game fish in the water.  There are alligators in a pit at the foot of the elevator.  There are three huge aquarium tanks - one in the main part of the store, one in the restaurant/bar attached to the bowling alley, and one in the restaurant/bar on the observation deck level.

One of the alligators at the
elevator's base.

 The elevator cycles through a
range of colors.

The elevator whisks you to the observation deck and restaurant near the top of the pyramid.  From the observation deck, you get panoramic views of downtown Memphis and the Mississippi River. 

Canada geese fly
through the air.

Like all Bass Pro Shops and Cabela's, there are taxidermied animals displayed in natural surroundings throughout the store.  There are bears, deer, wild pigs, and other assorted megafauna among the trees and around the aquarium tanks.  There are even ducks and geese "flying" overhead!

Retrieve your ball from Jaws' mouth!

My favorite bowling ball.

The bowling alley sports an underwater theme.  When the ball returns to you, it's comes flying out of some creature's mouth!  My favorite was the shark.  Or maybe the catfish.  The lanes are made to look like wooden docks with fish under the floor.  There are fish suspended from the ceiling, too, so you're surrounded by sea creatures while you bowl.

It's difficult to describe the Bass Pro Shops at the Pyramid.  It's incredibly big, and there's a lot jammed in the space.  It kind of reminds me of one of the kid's books with the detailed crowded drawings where you see something new every time you open it.  Definitely worth seeing if you're in the area.

My June Vacation in September (Part 3) - Hot Springs, Arkansas, Continued

If you haven't seen the previous two posts in this series, my sister and I try to take a vacation together
at least once a year, and this year, we had originally planned to take the trip in June, but life intervened and we postponed it to September.  We went to Nashville first, then to the main event, Hot Springs, Arkansas.  This post continues the Hot Springs saga!

Taking the advice of one of our cousins who had visited Hot Springs before, we went to the Buckstaff bathhouse for an authentic traditional Hot Springs mineral bath experience.  We weren't allowed to have cameras during the process, so you'll just have to use your imagination!

We checked in, made our way to an upper floor where we waited on benches for our names to be called.  We undressed, were wrapped in sheets toga-style and led to our individual bathing cubicles where we literally climbed, via a step stool, into the biggest bathtubs I've ever seen.  These tubs are long enough that I stretched my legs out straight and had to have a spacer placed behind me so I wouldn't slide down too far!  And they were deep enough that only my head was above the water.  The water, cooled to a temperature of about 110 degrees before being piped to the bathing area, gushed out of a 2-inch pipe to fill the tub.  The attendant turned on an old fashioned whirlpool machine and left me to cook for half an hour with two cups of hot mineral water to drink, which she replenished several times.  "Be sure to keep drinking!"

When the stewing was finished the attendant helped me out of the tub, wrapped me in another sheet and took me to a table where she placed towels soaked in the hot mineral water and had me lie back onto them.  Then she added more hot towels on my legs and arms, wrapped some ice in a cold towel to put on my face, and gave me a cup of ice water to sip.  The whole time I was on the table, the attendant insisted that we all drink our water, and she kept our cups filled.

After the table, I got ten minutes in a sitz bath - basically, you sit your rear end only in a miniature version of the bathtub.  The first few seconds were the hardest - hot seat!!!  After that, it became bearable.  After that, three minutes in the "vapor cabinet."  They don't call them steam cabinets because it's just the "vapors" from the hot spring water, which isn't hot enough to be "steam."  Three minutes was plenty, though!  I must have looked ridiculous, with just my head protruding from a big white box.

After the sitz bath, it was time for a lukewarm "needle shower."  This is an early version of the trendy shower tower panels of today.  There are vertical pipes mounted in the corners of the shower stall with tiny nozzles that make a needle-fine spray over your body, part of the cooldown phase.  After the shower, I could have had a Swedish massage, but there was a long wait, so we decided to skip it.  The attendant led us back to the changing room, where we dried off and got dressed.

After that treatment, we were basically worthless.  Completely relaxed, but worthless.  It was GREAT.

About twenty miles north of Hot Springs is Hot Springs Village, a gated community (the largest in the world!) of mostly empty nesters and retirees.  It's been around a LONG time.  I mean, I remember going to the state fair when I was in high school and seeing a booth in the Exposition Hall with pamphlets about Hot Springs Village.  It was kind of a big deal.  We'd seen a couple of writeups in the tourist information magazines we'd picked up along the way that basically said that if you wanted to visit, you had to enter by the east gate.  So, being the nosy Parkers we are, we decided to drive up there and scope out the place.  We drove on two-lane highway most of the way, and it looked like there was nothing ahead but the boonies, when we started seeing signs to the East Gate.  All right!  Here we go!  It turned out you can't go in without a sponsor - someone you're visiting (and who is expecting you!) or a real estate agent.  We had neither, so we had to turn around and go back to Hot Springs.  It was fine.  We had a nice drive and we got to gripe (but good-naturedly) all the way back about the people who had written those misleading articles.  The one bust of the trip.  If that's the only thing that went wrong, that's not too bad.

Ronaldo's outside area

One of the restaurants we hit was Ronaldo's Speakeasy - delicious Guatemalan fare.  Another was the Ohio Club, a REAL historic speakeasy.  During Prohibition, it was turned into a cigar store up front by the street, but behind was the speakeasy.  We also visited a coffee shop, Kollective Coffee and Tea.  All of these buildings are directly across the street from the bathhouses, so were backed up to the rock face of West Mountain.  Ronaldo's has a back entrance where you climb up some stairs to the back door and an outdoor seating area that's on the mountainside, level with the second floor of the building.  Kollective Coffee and Tea has big windows that overlook the "alley" behind the building.  There are about three feet between the outside wall of the building and the mountain's rock face, so from inside, it looked like the rock face was right up against the window glass.

OH!  There was ONE other thing that didn't pan out.  We had wanted to take a boat tour of Lake Hamilton, but the one day we could go and there was space available it rained.  All day.  All night.  So we missed out on the boat ride.

All in all, Hot Springs was a pleasant surprise.  Plenty to do.  Relatively inexpensive.  We had FUN!  And we never even went to the casino and horse track - HA!

Next, we drove to Memphis, but that's the next post.  Until then...

MOMENT (A Five-Minute Friday Post)

Before I get started on today's word, please, please, PLEASE forgive me for changing the comments settings so they now require a word recognition box before a comment can be submitted.  I've been getting a LOT of robot and spam messages as comments, so I felt I had to take that step, and I hate it.  I know it can be kind of off-putting to type in those silly words, but it is what it is - UGH.  I apologize.

Here we go!

Can we all just take a moment?

Relax?

Wind down?

Loosen up?

Calm down?

Unbend?

Simmer down?

Collect ourselves?

It only takes a moment to stop and take a short break.  Sometimes that's all that's required.  Just a little time away.  Get up, get out, and take a walk.  

Or lie down and take a nap.  When was the last time you took a nap?  

I took a solo vacation to Cocoa Beach (one of my favorite places).  I had been at the beach all morning, had a great lunch, and now it was mid-afternoon, and I was TIRED.  I sighed and thought, "Oh, I wish I could take a nap!"

Suddenly, a light switched on in my brain.  DUH!  Why NOT?  Oh.  My.  Gosh.  Nobody was going to stop me.  I wasn't at work - I was ON VACATION.  I could DO WHAT I WANTED.  I COULD take a nap!

So I did.

------------------------------------------------------------

This post is part of the Five-Minute Friday link-up.  Today's writing prompt was "MOMENT."  For more information on Five-Minute Friday, click here.

A Florida Classic

I've been home from Florida for a little while, and it's hard to believe it even happened!  It's as if I'd dreamed it, or it's something not quite real.

That Man had two races on back-to-back weekends in Gainesville, Florida, and we spent the days in between in Orlando.  We didn't visit the mouse, the wizard, or the performing sealife.  No, we went to GATORLAND!

What a great place!  It’s reasonable in price, has easy (and close!) parking, and is a great way to spend a day.  It’s just a totally different experience from the flashy central Florida theme parks.  It's been a classic Florida tourist attraction since 1949 and is still family owned.

We got there just in time for the first gator jumping show.  They send halved chickens across one of the front lagoons on pulleys and the alligators go for them.

We walked around and saw hundreds of alligators and birds, and even some crocodiles. You can buy hot dogs to feed the alligators, and the birds try to steal them. The birds are bold.  They sidle up to you casually, pretending they aren't interested in the hot dogs.  I had to keep shooing away a stork.  I could have pushed him aside, he was so close!  I just waved him off, though.  I didn’t want to get in trouble for molesting the wildlife.

Gatorland sits between two swamps, and a boardwalk meanders through one of the swamps. It was quiet in there.  Not many people do this boardwalk.  Lots of interesting plants to see, and all natural!  No plantings.  Just good ol' swamp.

There’s a train ride that takes about 20 minutes and circles the park while they tell about the park’s history. 

There's a monster swamp buggy ride. That was just silly fun.  Wear your seat belts or you'll be sorry!

There’s a zip line across the breeding marsh. There are zip lines everywhere you go any more.  We didn’t do that (chickens!) but we watched others.  

There’s another boardwalk that crosses the breeding marsh.  We saw LOADS of alligators and birds up close.  

There are hundreds of egrets, and they come and go as they please. They build their nests wherever, including along the boardwalk. There were two or three nests that were so close I could have easily reached out and taken their eggs without even stretching.

Of course, we HAD to watch the alligator wrestling show. That was as much fun as I remembered. The running commentary during the shows is hilarious.

There's a petting zoo, Galapagos tortoises to feed, snake, Florida panther, and bobcat exhibits, an aviary, and more fun experiences available.

We got a lot of walking in and didn’t wear ourselves out, either.  Gatorland is one of those places that you’d probably have to twist a teenager’s arm to go to, but they’d love it once they were there. Definitely a great place for younger kids.  Or OLD kids, like us!