Hello from Memphis, Tennessee! This morning we woke up to chilly temps and foggy, raw weather in Hot Springs. After breakfast we hit the road for a relatively quick 2.5-hour drive to Memphis. We certainly aren’t in Kansas Texas anymore! It is amazing how quickly the weather and landscape changed as soon as we left Texas and the west/southwest states. Gone are the majestic mountains, colorful deserts, and dramatic canyons…and the warmth. The roads feel more familiar with their green grass, scrub oaks, maples, and other deciduous trees. Autumn is still present in this part of the country. Dry leaves crunch beneath our feet and blow across streets and collect in gutters. A hint of winter is in the air. It’s hard to believe that only a few days ago we were wearing summer clothes. What a difference a few hundred miles makes!

A totem pole in the zoo’s Northwest Passage area.

Our plan was to go to the Memphis Zoo tomorrow, but there is a tremendous amount of rain on the way, so we opted to go today instead. We really wanted to visit on a weekday to avoid crowds, but decided it was better to go today than to extend our stay (or walk around in the deluge…yuck). We were really glad we did!

For some reason, the zoo was empty. For most of the day we were the only ones viewing the animals. There were many times that we looked around and saw no one else. Its almost like the zoo was open just for us! The zoo in Memphis is rated as one of the best in the country, so we expected there to be copious amounts of people. What an amazing surprise!

In addition to minimal interaction with other humans, we had another rare pleasure. Most of the animals were not only awake, but in full view and wandering around. There have been so many times that we’ve gone to a zoo and “watched” sleeping animals or were frustrated looking for hidden ones. Not here. There were only a handful of animals that were snoozing in the entire zoo. Even the snakes were active!

The meerkats were not only awake, but on high alert. This is the reaction they all had to every plane passing overhead (which happened every few minutes).

The zoo does a very nice job of creating “cultural spaces” for each collection of animals. There are beautiful Asian gardens in the China animal collection, vibrant tribal art in the Northwest Passage section, and an adorable farm-themed area for kids. Appropriate music accompanies each area. The interior exhibits, which in many other zoos are often old/outdated/dirty, were beautiful and clean. We could actually see through the glass!

This gaboon viper was behind glass (thank goodness!). He was also awake and checking us out!

One of the most impressive areas was the Cat Country area. I think we spent over an hour there. The cats were all awake and doing their cat things. Even the reclusive puma was awake and hanging out in full view. We got to watch a pair of cheetahs playfully rolling in the grass, a jaguar leaping from rock to rock in his enclosure, and a pair of ocelots…um…noisily “flirting” with each other.

It’s hard work being a lioness!

This gorgeous specimen has one white parent and one orange parent. She was stunning!

Perhaps the most amazing part of Cat Country (and maybe then entire park), was the red panda. I don’t know why it was in with the cats, being in the raccoon family, but it sure was adorable. It was walking all around its enclosure and in and out of his tree house. It was impossibly fluffy.

Who wouldn’t want one of these in their house? It’s a walking stuffed animal!

After taking about 200 photos there, we moved on. We saw the entire place in about 4 hours, at a fairly leisurely pace. One of the big (no pun intended) highlights was the hippo exhibit. There was something mesmerizing about watching these blimps of the sea gracefully trotting under the water. The water was murky, so I don’t have any photos. You’ll have to take my word for it.

There is a great assortment of birds both in the bird house and in outdoor exhibits. We were greeted by this burrowing owl on the way out of the bird house. The flamingo was hanging with his friends in the flamingo pond.

The siamang gibbon on the left started performing on the rope when we showed up. The young bonobo on the right was a troublemaker and wrestled a corn cob away from a baby seconds after this photo was taken.

What a great day with the animals! Want to see more animal photos? There are plenty more on my site and on Billy’s. Tomorrow we are going to look for rainy day Memphis activities. Any suggestions? Thanks for visiting!

I couldn’t resist another red panda photo. Makes me want to yawn, too!