Memphis Music and Heritage Festival

One of the best things (if not the best thing) about moving to Memphis is that my friend from graduate school, Carla, lives here. We've gotten together with her quite a few times both with and without the kids. Yesterday we went downtown to the Memphis Music and Heritage Festival with her.

It's summer in Memphis, so it was very hot yesterday afternoon. So we decided to go into the Peabody Hotel before we went to the festival and let it cool off a little outside. The Peabody is a beautiful old hotel downtown that has a fountain in the lobby. And in the fountain live 5 ducks. Apparently, as the story goes, back in the 1930s the general manager of the hotel went on a hunting trip to Arkansas with a friend. They returned late at night and had a little too much whiskey to drink. They thought it would be hilarious if they put a few of their live hunting decoy ducks in the hotel's fountain. And I guess the guests loved it, and so there have been ducks in the fountain ever since. The ducks live up on the roof of the hotel and spend 11:00-5:00 every day down in the fountain in the lobby.

We got to the hotel in time to see the ducks exit the fountain, walk across a red carpet (that they rolled out just for them) in single file, to the elevators, get on the elevator and head up to their rooftop home. It was pretty amusing.

It was still darn hot outside after the ducks were done with their march, but we headed out to the festival anyway. Stian wanted to do a craft, and fortunately they had a few craft tables set up (inside! in air conditioning!). So Stian made himself a crown.

Then we wandered out into the heat. There was music in different venues and some vendors set up and food. It was pretty low key, but we enjoyed ourselves.

A drill team type group did a performance that Stian enjoyed watching.

The festival was on Main Street down town which does not allow cars. It's pedestrians and trolleys. A trolley came by and Stian enjoyed getting an up close look at it. We haven't taken him on a trolley ride yet because they aren't air conditioned and it's been so hot. We've been saving it for an activity for a cooler day.

After the festival we wandered over to a local burger place and had a nice dinner. While we were in there the skies just opened up and there was an amazing down pour and thunder storm. Eventually Kris and Carla went running out into it to get cars. The kids and I waited at the restaurant. We timed it just wrong as they ran back in pouring rain, with water up over their shoes, finally got to the parking garage, got in their cars, and it quit raining. Ah well.

Incidentally, it is not any cooler today after the huge storm last night. It's just muggier.