Fun and Free Family Activities in Memphis, TN
My all-time favorite place to take children is actually free for those families with yearly memberships. It is The Memphis Zoo. Fun should be the middle name for this world-class zoo, where the animals roam freely in many areas, and the landscaping is absolutely stunning with its hundreds of bamboo species and herbal plantings and flowers. This Zoo is truly world-famous. The China exhibit is an area where you can catch a glimpse of the giant pandas on loan from mainland China for a number of years. There are state-of-the-art landscapes with fabricated boulders and cliffs where the large cats roam and splash in cool, fresh water. The reptile house and bird displays are breathtaking. A new area, the Northwest Passage, draws people from all over the region. I cannot say enough about this place. Many local people get annual memberships to enter free all year and just visit to relax, enjoy the flowers, plants and animals, while they have a snack at the main restaurant in front of the zoo entrance. A yearly membership is only $60 per person, $70 for two, or $79 for a family with all children under 21 years old. A one-time visit without membership will cost $13 per adult and $8 per child under 11. Children under 2 are not charged. Much of an entire day can be spent at the zoo and if you start off with a picnic lunch the family can relax beside the pond nearby in Overton Park, then head to the zoo and enter this magical place for a full afternoon of fun and thrills. Tuesday afternoons are always free to the general public after 2 p.m. as well. For relaxation, a small zootram can ride you around for just a dollar! The website is www.memphiszoo.org.
My next favorite place is simply downtown Memphis because there are so many fun activities for family outings. First there’s the riverwalk which was completed to give people a chance to wander beside the mighty Mississippi and wonder at the enormity of this incredible river that is the lifeblood of this city. Take a picnic and settle down for free on a blanket at Tom Lee Park to enjoy the breezy waterfront with your children. Families from all over go down there to fly kites or to play frisby with their dogs and it’s really fun just to do some people-watching while you enjoy the river. Next, you can take the family down to Mud Island where you board a monorail tram over the Wolf River to the Island. Mud Island has an interesting museum that would please the adults, but there’s a fun riverwalk that is a facsimilie water model of the entire Mississippi River from its MN source to the mouth at New Orleans that will interest children. Despite the name, Mud Island is a really pretty place that’s both entertaining and fun. There are places to get cold drinks for everyone, and some snacks too.
After Mud Island, you will most certainly want to take a trolley ride down Main St. and circle down Riverside drive for a fabulous River view and cool breezes on your neck at the open trolley windows. I Love the trolleys. They are beautiful exact replicas of the antique trolleys like the ones in New Orleans and they’re comfortable and relaxing after any long walk. While they’re not free, the fee is very low-right now at just over a dollar per person for a ride that will last over 20 minutes and sometimes more for the entire circuit. I always like to walk through the beautiful Peabody Hotel and it’s fun to take kds through just to see the grandeur of this ante-bellum hotel known the world over. They will love to watch the Peabody ducks spash in the fountain under an enormous bouquet of fresh stargazer and other lillies and see the player piano magically grind out tunes with nobody at the keyboard!
Another last place I would highly recommend people take their quite small children is the Memphis Children’s Museum on Central Avenue. It’s in midtown Memphis about 3 miles from the Memphis Zoo. This place is free for members, but like the Zoo, will cost for a one-time non-membership visit. However, the price is about half that of the Zoo’s cost per person. It’s open Tues.-Sat. from 9-5 and Sun. from 12-5, closed on Mondays. Their website is www.cmom.com. This “museum” is a dreamland for small children. There’s a “grocery” where they can actually pick out items and check them out (pretend, of course), a part of a plane they can get in and play on, and a big fire engine to climb and play around as well. The fascination for children is that these are actual examples of the big world they are just beginning to learn about. It’s all hands-on here and it’s all about children. They can learn about shopping, kitchen parphenalia, stores, growing things, all sorts of fun stuff. And there are special exhibits and programs put on throughout the week for an added bit of excitement. Memphis has so many parks that it almost seems like a garden city. The trees are the city’s pride and joy.
Audubon Park, further out east, is an incredible place to relax, picnic and ride bikes or get in a daily walk. But I have always favored Overton Park because it is the oldest in the city and a true landmark, modeled after Ohlmstead’s Central Park in New York City. The trees are immense. Basically there are two sections of this large park-the golf course and open area with the pond where all the midtowners take their dogs and play frisby or touch football or fly kites and the old forest area. The Zoo is at the far north end of this space. There is also Brooks Museum, which is a modern museum that has incredible exhibits like the recent display of handmade quilts from the lower East Coast as well as an impressive permanent collection of fine painting and sculpture. A restaurant there serves wonderful salads and sandwiches for a very reasonable price, but a picnic would be a free alternative to this for families with children. The old forest is densely shaded by trees and there are fun walking trails and paved bike paths. Elms, locusts, dogwoods, beeches, hickory and oak trees tower over the trails, making the air cool and fresh in the summer. It can sometimes be up to 10 degrees cooler in these trails than outside the park on the hot summer pavement.
There are a lot more parks and recreation areas for family outings in Memphis-way too many to include. I have tried to focus on areas downtown and in midtown where a family can go and do several things for free or a very low price and enjoy an entire day of entertainment, exercise and even education.
