This past Friday Nancy and I had decided to take the day off and do a little trip because our other planned vacations had been interrupted for one reason or another. Initial plans were to go to Gulfshores for the weekend.
Well, if you remember what happened there was this little storm, Sally, that dashed our plans. We started going down the list of places we could go and still have some fun. We discussed the options that included New Orleans, Natchez and a few other destinations.
We decided, what the heck, let’s go to Memphis and we can control our environment to the level we feel safe. That originally had been the plan for Gulfshores. Controlling the environment in New Orleans is a little more difficult so that was out.
We called our son-in-law, who lives in Bartlett near Memphis, and told him to set up a round of golf which he did for Saturday. That gave Nancy and me the chance to do something we would like to do Friday afternoon.
We chose to go to downtown and visit Beale Street before the crowds got there. We started at the lobby of the Peabody Hotel. This place is really something to behold, built in 1925 at the current location. According to the bartender, it had been a different name at a different location prior to the current location. There had been two other Peabody Hotels, but they had long since closed.
One of main attractions at the Peabody is watching the live ducks swim in the lobby fountain amongst the hotel guests.
Then we decided to walk down Beale and, of course, visit places like Silky Sullivan’s and Rum Boggie and take in some of the fun and entertainment. When we entered the restaurant they recorded our names as well as cell numbers in order to do contact tracing for COVID-19 exposure if necessary.
That evening we met our daughter and husband for dinner.
Saturday morning the guys got up and went to play golf with plans to meet the girls at the Memphis Zoo afterward. The weather was absolutely wonderful Saturday morning, and playing golf was really fun. Windyke offers two 18 hole courses and a par three course. Like everywhere else, they are observing pandemic safety rules of social distancing, the wearing of masks in public areas as well as use of hand-sanitizer. The goal is to keep everyone as safe as possible. Initially, the rules of play would allow one rider per golf cart, but that has lightened up now.
This would be granddaughter Anne Caroline’s first visit to the zoo, and she had a fine time. I was afraid it might be a little much for her only being a year old, but she had a blast looking at all the animals.
We had a chance to visit most of the exhibits, where everyone stayed socially distant and wore masks. Anne Caroline’s favorite exhibit was the monkeys, and she knew what they were. We had time to visit most of the park and really enjoyed the cool weather and seeing exhibits.
That evening we grilled out and had great food. Our unplanned trip turned into a great time for everyone involved.
