Catching Up

So my goal of writing about all of our various roadtrip stops seems to have fallen by the wayside. We are now at our extended layover in Utah and I haven't written a thing about what we've done thus far. So this will be a catchup post. The Cliff's notes version, if you will. As much as I would love to write detailed accounts of every event, I know that it will never happen. So a summarized version is better than nothing. Here goes.

Our first stop was Memphis where Anton ran his first 50 mile Ultra-marathon at Oak Mountain Park. Of the 80-some people who entered the race, he was only 1 of 8 who actually finished the full 50 miles. I am so proud of him. He wanted to finish the race in under 12 hours and he did it in 11 hours, 54 minutes and 8 seconds. He had to walk quite a bit, but he finished. He was sore and blistered, but he prevailed.

While Anton was running, I took the kids to the coolest children's museum I've ever been to. They had a water play area, real fire trucks, police cars, airplanes, climbing toys, puzzles, and more and more. It was awesome. If any of you are ever in Memphis, you must go there.

The next day we made the obligatory Memphis visit to Graceland. I honestly wasn't too terrible impressed. I think if I was more of a diehard Elvis fan I would've liked it more, but I expected more glitz and glam.

Some of the displays were cool though, and I thought the one on his military service was interesting. But overall, I wouldn't go back again if I was in Memphis. One of those do once things.

We hit up the Hard Rock Cafe for lunch so Anton could get one of the collectable glasses. Then it was off to take a bus tour of town. This was a pretty cool tour in that the tour guide is a musician. They play and sing the songs that go along with what you are seeing on the tour. They also hand out instruments for everyone to play along. It was a lot of fun.

The next day found us at the Pink Palace museum. There was a bunch of other stuff we wanted to do, but found out they were all closed on Mondays. But the Pink Palace turned out to be really fun. They had displays on everything from dinosaurs to the Civil War to circuses to grocery stores. Our favorite part was the section they had on treasure hunting. We played in there so long we missed the IMAX show we were going to go to. Oh well.

From there we headed over to Beale Street for some famous Memphis BBQ. We ate at the Pig on Beale. It wasn't the best BBQ I've ever had. In fact, the stuff my sister made for us the next week was better than what we had here. But it was a necessary stop and we had fun regardless of the fact that the food wasn't that great. Plus, it was really fun watching to servers fighting over who got to serve our table.

And then the heat of Memphis finally got to us. So we went to the mall. It was the only air conditioned place we could think of where the kids could run around and it didn't cost anything. They had a great play space and us adults were able to just relax. Malls are always my favorite vacation stops. :)

So that concluded our Memphis stop. Next it was on to my sister's house in Louisiana. But that will need to be a post all it's own.