The Riverwalk on Mud Island

Memphis has a park on Mud Island in the Mississippi River that has a scale model of the Lower Mississippi that is a half-mile long. The horizontal scale is 30 inches to the mile and the vertical is one inch to eight feet. This is a most impressive sculpture with geographic features and maps of major towns showing bridges and historical events, too.

We parked at the Tennessee Visitor Center that is next to Mud Island and close to the I-40 Bridge over the river. The very nice attendant said we could park there all day if we wanted. There was some shade so it was perfect.

An elevated pedestrian bridge with a monorail car hanging under it is a fun way to walk over to the island to see the Mississippi scale model and get views of the river itself as well.

The scale model has water flowing through the contoured layers of concrete and shows islands, city maps, tributaries and a pool-like Gulf of Mexico at the end. The contours represent five feet of depth change. Kids are welcome to tromp through the water (over a million gallons flowing through) in the “river” but there is no swimming in the Gulf. There is also a museum about the river on site that is open seasonally.

The model starts with the Upper Mississippi/Missouri all at one spot, then shows the details of the Lower Mississippi. I was so impressed and so glad we stopped.

Graceland

Then it was on to Elvis for the afternoon. Graceland is now a big museum park that includes an RV campground. We conveniently reserved a stay here for tonight and walked over to the Museum buildings.

The tour started with a short video (not nearly as nice as the Grand Ole Opry video), then loaded us up into shuttles to cross the street to the Graceland mansion and grounds. This is the house that Elvis bought as a youngster at age 22 and then vowed to keep for the rest of his life. It cost that young man about 1.2 million in today’s dollars. In addition to the house, he was also purchasing almost 14 acres of land. He added many things onto the grounds, including the front gates, pool, stables, a racket ball court and the meditation garden where Elvis and his parents are buried. The famous “jungle room” was an enclosed back porch made to remind him of Hawaii.

The house felt very frozen in time with everything on the ground level and basement being preserved for public view. The upstairs, personal quarters, was off-limits.

The museum buildings containing collections has things on display and things cataloged like any museum. There are eleven “exhibits” at the moment with Elvis’ airplanes, cars, army uniforms, movie career, entertainer career, and more. There is a collection of Lisa Marie items titled “Growing Up Presley” which we thought was a little weird with lots of her clothing on display. My personal favorite was the ICONS room where other artists made tributes to his influence from Dolly Parton to Justin Timberlake to Kiss. There is an overwhelming amount of stuff! Tony wondered if someone is collecting things like this from modern superstars like Taylor Swift or Beyoncé.

There were at least six different gift shops that we walked through as well. An interesting video about moving the Convair 880 plane (named Lisa Marie) into its display spot was playing in the plane gift shop. The wings were cut off to get it down the city streets, and a couple of men rode on top to move electrical lines out of the way. Crowds gathered to watch it and the parade even had a marching band.

What an active day spent in Memphis. We did not get to Beale Street, so a return trip will happen later.