Downtown Day Staycation part 2 of 3

We woke up from our bunkhouse slumber party and came home to shower and eat breakfast and then we headed downtown to our day of fun.  

The first place we went was Mud Island.  I haven't been here since I was a kid and my kids have never been there.  It cost $6 to park and we skipped the monorail/museum cost (would have cost us $35 for our family) and decided to walk across the big bridge (about a 10 minute walk across the river) and do just the Mud Island part for FREE!  Total cost: $6 which was only for parking

This is the bridge we walked across....

 Pics taken from the bridge...

Mud Island River Park...this is where we walked to.

Harbor Landing...this is where I had my 10 yr. reunion.

Mud Island from a few stories up.  It is a small scale model of the 1,000 mile Mississippi River.

The kids loved that they got to get in it!

You get all the way to the end and this represents how it empties into the Gulf.  

Small scale model of Memphis...

 We walked around Main Street. They were having the Southern Heritage Music Festival (which we didn't even know about but added to the fun!) and they had all kinds of booth and live music.

We had already planned to eat lunch at Aldo's Pizza Pies (it's fairly new!) and it happened to be right by the festival.

 We stopped by the Court Square and checked out the pretty fountain.  Gorgeous little park!

We tried to ride the trolley but ran out of time. We have done this many times before so we wanted to do other things.

My dad's office building...

Awesome fountains!  Next time we will bring our bathing suits!

Next we stopped by the Peanut Shoppe (I never knew it existed!) but it is the neatest little shop!  Yes Brayden and Lucy are allergic but only if they consume them.  They have other things besides peanuts.

Jay got some popcorn and the kids picked out some candy each.  All of it cost only $5.

Live music off of Main Street....

We rode a carriage ride (the princess carriage of course...Lucy's choice!).  They charge $45 for half/hour and $75 for an hour.  We asked for what they call a "joy ride" for $25.  It was about a 20 minute ride and was plenty....cha ching!

We went to the Fire Museum (next post!) but then we finished off the day by seeing the Peabody Ducks.  If you aren't familiar with the Peabody Ducks, every day since the 20's these ducks have been trained to float all day here in this fountain and then at 5:00 p.m. the Duckmaster leads them out of the fountain and they walk to a nearby elevator up to their penthouse on the top. It is a pretty neat Memphis tradition!

Check out all the people watching....

Karis got her picture taken with the Duckmaster!

After all of our outings, we top the day off with the famous Gus' Fried Chicken before we headed home.  None of us have ever eaten here and wanted to see what all the fuss was about!  It is a hole in the wall restaurant but is world famous for their chicken.

We got the family pack which ended up being about $35 total (which also included drinks and some fried pickles as an appetizer).

Brayden LOVES "chicken on a bone" a.k.a fried chicken. It was spicy but it didn't keep him from eating at least 3!

Poor Lucy fell asleep before the food came.  I woke her up when it got there and asked her if she wanted to eat and she said no. When we were leaving, she woke up and said, "But we didn't eat dinner!!!"  Haha she slept through the whole thing!

Last post coming soon...the Fire Museum!