Staycation: Part 1

Earlier this year, Charles and I decided to explore the many things Memphis has to offer that we had not experienced together. The Pink Palace Museum was playing Under the Sea, an interesting looking IMAX film, so we decided that that should be our first excursion. I was off of work Monday for the 4th of July, so we took that opportunity to enjoy an early lunch at Pei Wei followed by the Pink Palace...

The film was really good; if you have a chance to see it, definitely do! We learned all about the many animals of ocean, camouflaged predators, coral reefs, and many other interesting oceanic things. I really liked watching the cute little cuddle fish, the leafy sea dragon and the funny and playful sea lions!

We ended up staying for a triple feature! Not only did we learn about ocean animals, but we also traveled down the Colorado River to explore the Grand Canyon and traveled to Egypt to learn more about mummies.

We also explored all the museum had to offer!

We began our museum adventure in a room filled with skeletons of all kinds of animals from pythons...

to giraffes...and learned that all mammals, no matter if they have short necks or long necks, have 7 bones.

We saw all kinds of birds in that room too. I thought the owls were cute...When we saw the eagles, Charles said, "No, TTT!"

We learned how birds fly. Instead of just flapping their wings up and down, they actually wave them aerodynamically. I got to try out their flight pattern!We saw beautiful butterflies from all over the world...

In the next exhibit, we learned all about geology and dinosaurs.
We saw fossils from many different time periods...

and saw many different dinosaurs...

and a woolly mammoth type...we also saw many different gems and minerals...Some were so colorful and pretty, and some were huge!

We also saw an earthquake magnitude measuring machine...

We learned about all kinds of animals and saw a deer and her cute baby...

and all kinds of other woodland creatures...We saw a buffalo...and a drama groundhog...

We learned how the Native Americans lived in our area...

and saw pieces of their pottery...

We learned about the Battle of Memphis...

Nathan Bedford Forrest...the Civil War, and about the Confederate Veterans...

and saw many pieces of Confederate currency from all Confederate States...

We learned about Reconstruction and saw a Reconstruction era campaign flag...

We also learned about the Victorian Era. It was interesting to see the types of toys they played with...We saw a hand run cotton gin...and looked inside a general store...
and saw how grocery shopping evolved by exploring a replica of the first Piggly Wiggly....

They had many of the same brands and even some of the same logos of today stocked on the shelves!We saw a Model T and a gas station from those times...

We also learned about the Memphis Red Sox...

And famous African-American Memphians such as W C Handy...

We saw the Circus!I loved all the detail of this diminutive circus scene! It had it all - animals, spectators and all kinds of circus acts...

We toured the dinosaur exhibit...and saw a moving and roaring T-Rex...

saw a cute little dinosaur and her cute baby... and saw one of Nessie's friends!

We also toured the mansion and saw everything from a polar bear...

to a shrunken head!

We learned about the Suffragettes...

and about the Memphis Cotton Carnival... and saw the evolution of the swimsuit...
Charles was brave and checked out the objects in the log...
He accurately identified 3 out of the 4!

We also saw a strange looking old gas mask...

and learned about Memphians' contributions to WW I...

WW II...

and the Korean War...

We also saw many artifacts from the late 1800's early 1900's which were uncovered from the Fed Ex Forum site...We saw bottles of all kinds...all early games such as dice and marbles...

We actually learned lots and had a great day!