At The Zoo

9:30 a.m.
The Memphis Zoo, I think, has the most elaborate and striking entrance of any zoo I've visited. Not only are there a dozen or so huge, white silhouettes of wildlife greeting the visitor in front of the entrance, but immediately inside you confront a towering obelisk covered with Egyptian hieroglyphics, and several columns plastered with them as well. Egyptian hieroglyphics, in Tennessee? That's not as wacky as it seems. It turns out that the town was originally named "Memphis" by its founders (one of whom was Andrew Jackson...the $20 bill Jackson) after the name of a "once-thriving metropolis" on the banks of the Nile River in Egypt. I've never heard of Memphis, Egypt, but then again, my knowledge of Egyptian history would never take me far on Jeopardy. So there you are.
Just past the obelisk we spot our first animal, a sleek, diminutive cat that looks something like a cross between a cheetah and a housecat. It's a serval, from the grasslands and woodlands of Africa, and with those long legs it looks engineered for speed.
9:55 a.m.
Still in the Cat House, and it's fascinating to see how a cat's shape is irrefutably linked to where it lives and how it captures its prey.....how it makes a living. During my years as a park ranger at Grand Canyon I was often struck by the fact that any organism - squirrel, raven, condor, bighorn, sagebrush, pine tree - looked the way it does because that shape is linked to its survival, and I used to encourage visitors on my nature walks to ask the question "How does its shape help it survive?", when encountering any kind of wildlife. And as I sit here and look at the Snow Leopard, I'm struck again by that fact; the Servals, Ocelots, and Cheetahs have long, thin legs and sleek bodies, perfectly adapted for chasing down prey in the open. The Snow Leopard, though, is squat with short, stumpy legs - and a body that abounds with a thick coat of fur....a perfect design for surviving and hunting in the deep snows and frigid conditions of the Himalayan mountains.
10:30 a.m.
Into the night. Or rather, into the Animals Of The Night exhibit. It's a pretty nifty place. Designed to look a bit like you're inside a cavern, with dim, moonlit lighting, it showcases quite a few nocturnal animals. Intriguing critters, one and all. Like a fluttering swarm of fruit-eating bats from Africa and South America; like an enclosure full of Vampire Bats; like the Springhass, a weird amalgamation of rabbit and wallaby - or so it seems; like the Armadillo; like the Ringtail cat, that I first saw raiding my backpack late at night along the banks of the Colorado at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. And like this mound of mobile fur called a Wombat - looking like an impossibly large guinea pig - that I'm watching waddle about it's enclosure just now.
11:15 a.m.

Our Trip To Memphis - Day One

Dear Family and Friends,

It's Spring Break, and we decided to use it to explore Memphis, Tennessee. It's only about a 3-hour drive from Murray, but we've never been back since passing through during our move from Flagstaff to Murray.

This cold, cloudy morning, then, we left Murray and drove down to Memphis, a city on the Mississippi and on the Tennessee/Arkansas border. We went directly to the Children's Museum:

Wendy loves these places, and this was a good one. She found lots of interesting and educational things to do:

After the museum, we drove out to our motel.....a Radisson that is right on the grounds of the Memphis Airport, just below the control tower. I never realized that FedEx flew so many planes!

The neighborhood's a bit noisy....there goes another plane now....but it's safe, anyway!

After settling in we followed our GPS to an Ihop (can't get these in Murray), and enjoyed a tasty breakfast/dinner. Wendy especially enjoyed her "Build-A-Face" pancake:

And then it was back to the Airport, a game of "Zeus On The Loose", and then to bed. And so ends day one in Memphis. G'Day, mates!