Walking in Memphis

Our friends, the Akin's, asked if we wanted to go to the Memphis Zoo with them on Saturday. We have never been and after reading about all the animals they have I knew Owen would love it. We decided to make it a little mini vacation and stay overnight Saturday to see a few more Memphis attractions since Jacob had Monday off work. We spent all day (5+ hours) at the zoo on Saturday where we saw penguins, polar bears, hippos and panda bears (among many other amazing animals). It is such a neat zoo with a ton of shade trees, so even though it was 90 degrees outside we were able to stay sort of cool.

Owen's favorite part of the zoo seemed to be the farm animals (of course).
He's easy to please, anyway :)

The panda bears looked like stuffed animals-so cute!
They were kicked back enjoying some bamboo and SO close, so the kids got a great look at them.

After a full day of animal gawking we were hungry, so we went to Uncle Lou's-they specialize in fried chicken and we ate a whole lot of fried sides, too. The fried pickles were my favorite-yum! Uncle Lou's has been featured on one of our favorite shows on the Food Network called Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. We decided it fell under the "dive" category and gave it two greasy thumbs up!

On Sunday we woke up and drove by Sun Studio (known as the Birthplace of Rock N' Roll and recording home to the "Million Dollar Quartet"- Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins) and Beale Street. Then we went to Graceland! We didn't actually go inside Elvis' house since our children can destroy a place in 2.5 seconds and we thought that would be disrespectful to the King :) Owen and I did tour Elvis' private airplane (named "Lisa Marie") and his private jet (named "Hound Dog II"). Elvis traveled in style, that's for sure!

Check out the bright green and yellow fabric on those seats of the jet! Too funny!
I don't think Elvis did subtle...

Olivia and I were peeking at Graceland over the massive rock wall lining the property.
People have written messages all over it as a kind of tribute.
The grounds in front of the house were so pretty.

They were having a car show in an adjoining property, so we were able to look at some nicely restored antique vehicles. Owen wanted to look at each and every one of them, but it was blazing hot, so we saw some then headed to lunch.

Jacob and I are all about food and love to find fun restaurants the locals love. Urbanspoon is one of our favorite sources for scoping out hot spots. Sunday we went to The Germantown Commissary which is mainly Bar-B-Que and it was SO good! They served tamales, so I ordered one. I took a few bites, then gave Olivia a taste. The little stinker ate the rest-she and I agreed it was delicious!

Our last stop was at a really nice shopping center where Jacob and Olivia browsed the Apple Store and Owen and I meandered through Anthropologie-such fun (and radically different) stores.

We made it home and dubbed our trip a successful family adventure! Looking forward to more fun times with my sweet family and exceedingly cooperative husband :)