Living Our Dream

Oak Ridge, TN

Heiskell (Knoxville), TN - Events of Monday, October 5 to Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Oak Ridge, Tennessee, is located about 30 minutes from Heiskell. Oak Ridge was the location of a secret city established at the beginning of WWII for the Manhattan Project, which was the code name for the secret project to build an atomic bomb. We headed to Oak Ridge on Monday to visit the American Museum of Science and Energy.

Originally called the American Museum of Atomic Energy, the museum first opened in 1949 in a WWII-era cafeteria. The present facility was opened in 1975. The name was changed to the American Museum of Science and Energy in 1978.

American Museum of Science and Energy

Outside the museum was a steel sculpture of the World Trade Center on loan from Limor Steel in Nashville.

Sculpture of the World Trade Center

Also outside was a pair of parabolic "Whisper Dishes." The dishes are placed about 100 feet apart, and if someone stands near the center of one dish and speaks in a whisper, a person standing next to the other dish can hear as clearly as if they were standing side by side.

Margery listening at one of the Whisper Dishes

Admission to the museum is a bargain at $5 for adults and $4 for seniors over 65. A popular feature of the museum is a bus tour every Monday, Wednesday and Friday of some of the remaining landmarks of the original Oak Ridge site. Seats on the bus are available on a first come, first served basis. Even though it was Monday, we decided not to do the bus tour because it doesn't start until noon and lasts three hours. That was later than we wanted to be tied up because we were planning to stop for lupper at a great place we found last year. More on that later.

Six weeks after the United States entered WWII, President Roosevelt formally approved a secret project to produce an atomic bomb. Scientists who had escaped Germany to the United States told of German efforts to produce such a weapon, and the race was on for the United States to be first.

Facilities for the Manhattan Project were located in three main sites. Site "W" near Hanford, Washington, was devoted to the production of plutonium. Site "Y" in the desert near Los Alamos, New Mexico, was where the bombs were designed, built and tested. Oak Ridge was Site "X" and was the location of uranium enrichment facilities and administration.

One reason the site at Oak Ridge was chosen was because it was located far enough from both coasts to reduce the chance of enemy attack. Its location on the Clinch River provided a good source for water, and there was also a dam nearby to provide electric power. Although the location was sparsely populated, which reduced acquisition costs, it had good access to rail transportation. The temperate climate also meant construction could go on year round.

The museum tells the history of Oak Ridge and of the Manhattan Project primarily by photos, written descriptions and videos. Construction of a secret city to house Manhattan Project workers and their families began in 1943. Oak Ridge was a self-contained city with housing, stores, theaters, schools, restaurants, sports facilities, churches and a library. The entire 59,000 acre site was completely surrounded by a fence punctuated by guard towers.

Margery reading about the construction of Oak Ridge

As is usually the case for any government project, this one expanded far beyond its initial estimate. It was originally thought Oak Ridge would be home for 13,000 people. The actual number was 75,000 by the end of the war. New houses were added at the rate of one every 30 minutes.

To help keep Oak Ridge secret, it did not appear on any map until after the war in spite of the fact it had 75,000 residents. For security reasons, everyone over the age of 10 was required to wear an ID badge. To further help maintain secrecy, workers at Oak Ridge were kept in the dark as to the purpose of their jobs. They worked only on their own part of the project with no knowledge of what anyone else was doing. There weren't many automobiles in Oak Ridge, but even those that belonged to top military officials were searched when they entered and left the site. The project was so top secret even Vice President Harry Truman didn't know about it until he took over the presidency following FDR's death in office in 1945.

The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. With no surrender by the Japanese forthcoming, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9. Although additional bombs were being readied, they were not necessary because Japan surrendered on August 15.

Oak Ridge was shifted to civilian control two years after the end of the war, but it remained under the authority of the Atomic Energy Commission. In 1959, the city was incorporated and was freed from federal supervision.

There is still a site in Oak Ridge that is used for nuclear weapons processing and another that is now the location of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, both of which are operated under the control of the U.S. Department of Energy.

In addition to the history of Oak Ridge and the Manhattan Project, the museum also has various scientific displays and exhibits, many of which are hands-on. In the next photo, Margery is operating a remote-controlled crane to pick up blocks.

Margery playing with a remote-controlled crane

The exhibit in the photo below demonstrates the Bernoulli Effect where the upward air flow from a nozzle flows around a ball counteracting gravity and suspending the ball in mid-air. Paul was pretending to levitate the ball.

Paul pretending to levitate a ball in a demonstration of the Bernoulli Effect

In the section of the museum on environmental protection, we came across a mannequin in a protective suit and wearing an MSA Ultra-Twin Full-facepiece Respirator. MSA is the company Paul worked for in his past life, and he did a considerable amount of work on molds for plastic components for the Ultra-Twin Facepiece and its sister product, the Ultravue Facepiece.

MSA Ultra-Twin Full-facepiece Respirator

In the area where there was a timeline of atomic discoveries there was a giant model of an atom. The swirling lights inside simulating electrons were mesmerizing.

Giant atom with swirling lights representing electrons

There is a large section of the museum that covers energy including nuclear, coal and oil. The next photo shows a scale model of an oil platform.

Scale model of an oil platform

There is a wealth of information available at the American Museum of Science and Energy. If you wanted to see everything in detail, read all the posted information and watch all the videos, it could easily take several days.

We finished at the museum in the early afternoon, and headed for the Holy Land Market and Deli in Knoxville for a late lunch. We discovered the Holy Land Market last year. They specialize in Middle-Eastern food in both the market and the deli.

Unfortunately, even though they are supposed to be open Mondays, when we got there we found a hand-written sign in their window that said "Closed - See You Tuesday." We headed back to the 5th wheel for lunch and made plans to go back to the Holy Land Market on Tuesday.

On Tuesday morning, we did some pre-departure chores in the morning then headed back to the Holy Land Market.

Holy Land Market

We loved the Reuben sandwiches we had at Holy Land last year, so that's what we both had again this year. They make their own Kosher-style corned beef, and it is really tender.

Margery with her Reuben sandwich

After our late lunch, we headed back to the 5th wheel and relaxed the rest of the day in preparation for our departure the next morning. We'll tell you where we headed in our next post.

Barbecue and Beans

Heiskell (Knoxville), TN - Events of Monday, October 6 to Thursday, October 9, 2014

We had rain and cooler temperatures over the weekend as predicted. It was still cool and cloudy on Monday, so it wasn't very conducive to doing any sightseeing. However, we had several restaurants in the Knoxville area we wanted to try so we headed out to Dead End B-B-Q in the afternoon in spite of the weather.

Dead End B-B-Q is located west of downtown Knoxville a few doors up the street from the Holy Land Market where we went a few days prior. Dead End B-B-Q gets its name from a group of friends and neighbors who gathered at the end of their dead end street to barbecue.

Dead End B-B-Q

Dead End B-B-Q has pulled pork, beef brisket, chicken, sausage and ribs. Sandwiches are served with house-made potato chips and range in price from $7 for chicken to $9.50 for brisket. Plates with two sides are $10 for sausage to $16 for brisket. We both had pulled pork with slaw and waffle-cut sweet potato fries (they call them chips) for $11.

Margery about to dig into her pulled pork

We weren't that impressed by Dead End Bar-B-Q. The pork was moist, but it was a little stringy and not too tender. It wasn't very smoky either. They had two sauces - hot and mild, and both were a little too sweet for our tastes. We liked the pork and the sauces at Archers far better than at Dead End. Although the sides at Dead End were good, we thought the sides at Archers were better, too.

We had more rain and clouds on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday, the clouds started to break up a bit, and it started to warm up again. Therefore, we decided to take a drive about 45 minutes east of Knoxville to check out the Bush's Beans Visitor Center and Museum in Chestnut Hill, TN.

Bush's Beans Visitor Center

Paul with a 1940 or 1941 Ford pickup outside the visitor center

Bush's is best known for their baked beans. They have about 30 kinds of baked and "Grillin'" beans as well as about 20 kinds of regular canned beans such as black, kidney, garbanzo, navy, etc.

Bush's started an ad campaign in the 1990s featuring Jay Bush, great grandson of the company's founder, and his talking dog, Duke. There is a running gag in the commercials with Duke coming up with different schemes to sell the secret family recipe for the baked beans.

Margery posing for a tourist photo with Jay Bush and Duke

One of the company's canneries is located right across the road from the visitor center. Although there are no tours of the factory itself, there is an excellent movie in the visitor center with the history of the company and with scenes of the bean-making process.

Bush's Bean factory

Also across the road from the visitor center and adjacent to the factory is the homestead of A. J. and Sally Bush, founders of Bush's Beans. The home is still used for company gatherings.

Bush family homestead

We arrived just in time for the next showing of the movie. It started out with several of the cute commercials with Jay and Duke. The movie then continued with the family and company history.

In 1904, A. J. Bush was about to open a hosiery factory in Chestnut Hill, TN when he was approached by the Stokley family (of Stokley-Van Camp fame) to partner with them to open a tomato cannery instead. Bush's tomato cannery was so successful, he was able to buy out the Stokley interest within two years and begin operating the cannery independently as Bush Brothers & Company.

The company grew, but suffered set-backs following WWI. In the 1920s, Bush's began to prosper again, and they acquired a couple of other canneries and expanded their line of canned foods to include vegetables other than tomatoes as well as fruits.

In the 1930s, inexpensive canned foods helped struggling families survive the Depression. Pork and beans became a staple in the American diet.

The company continued to grow through WWII as it supplied canned goods to our troops overseas. The building of a hydro-electric dam in 1942 resulted in the loss of Bush Brothers farm land and a cannery, but the company used the money they were paid as compensation to further expand their operations elsewhere.

Although they had previously been producing pork and beans, Bush's introduced a new line of baked beans in the 1970s and 1980s that was a huge success. Today, beans are Bush's primary product, and they supply 80% of the canned baked beans sold in the United States. They process over 55 million pounds of beans a year.

The movie also shows how beans are prepared and canned. The beans are cleaned, soaked and cleaned again on one side of the factory, and the sauce is prepared on the other. The beans and sauce meet up with the cans in the middle. After filling, the cans are cooked in a retort and are then labeled, boxed and palletized for shipment.

After the movie, we walked through the museum, which has more information on the production of canned beans. They also have a fun demonstration of the canning process where you can turn various cranks to deliver beans (actually plastic balls) down a series of chutes.

There is also a scale that gives you your weight in beans. Of course, we know there are two things you should never ask a lady - her age and her weight; but because we have been able to maintain our weight loss of several years ago by sticking to a low-carb diet, Margery doesn't mind telling everyone she only weighs 125,184 beans.

Margery weighs 125,184 beans

The rest of the museum has more details on the history of the Bush family and of Bush's Beans.

A. J. and Sally Bush, founders of Bush's Beans

Automated sealing of cans is done at the rate of hundreds of cans a minute, but it wasn't always that fast. The display in the photo below shows "hole and cap" cans. The cans were manufactured with the lids and bottoms already soldered on, but the lid had a hole about 1 inch in diameter through which the food was inserted. A cap with a small vent hole was then hand soldered over the 1-inch hole. After the can went through cooking in a retort, the vent hole was sealed (also by hand) with a drop of solder.

Cans were once hand-soldered

The museum exits through the gift shop, which is filled with country-themed merchandise. There are also shelves stocked with just about every product Bush's makes.

Gift shop

Seeing all those baked beans made us hungry. The visitor center has a café that serves southern specialties and various bean desserts including pinto bean pie, but we decided to pass and head back toward Knoxville because we had a different restaurant in mind. We'll tell you all about it in our next post.

Belmont Mansion

Mount Juliet (Nashville), TN - Events of Monday, June 23, 2014

Although we had numerous items on our list of possible things to do in the Nashville area, we were planning to take it easy and only do a couple of them. For one thing, Cedar Creek Corps of Engineers campground where we were staying was located about 20 or 25 miles northeast of Nashville, so almost all our sightseeing possibilities were pretty far away.

One of the things we were thinking about doing on Monday was taking a day trip about an hour south of Nashville to Franklin, TN. Franklin is a small, quaint town where there is a Civil War battlefield, a historic downtown area, and a couple of historic houses to tour. We were in the process of making a list of things we wanted to see there when we discovered Franklin was holding the Tennessee Senior Olympics all week. Not wanting to get our sightseeing plans tangled up with the 1,800+ participants and all the onlookers at the Senior Olympics, we decided to save Franklin for another visit.

We moved on to Plan B, which was to see Belmont Mansion. Belmont Mansion is located on the campus of Belmont University on the southwestern side of Nashville.

Belmont Mansion

Admission to the mansion is $12 for adults, $11 for seniors and military and $10.50 for AAA members. The mansion is open Mondays through Saturdays from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and Sundays from 1:00 to 4:00.

We were surprised at how many people were there on a weekday. Fortunately, the tours are run very efficiently; and we only had to wait a few minutes before our tour started.

In 1839, Adelicia Hayes married Isaac Franklin, who was a wealthy slave trader and plantation owner and who was 28 years her senior. The couple had 4 children, none of whom survived past age 11.

Isaac Franklin died unexpectedly in 1846; and Adelicia inherited from him a plantation in Tennessee, 8,700 acres of plantations in Louisiana, 50,000 acres of undeveloped land in Texas, stocks, bonds, and 750 slaves. The estimated value of the estate was $1 million, which was a LOT of money back then. She had become the wealthiest woman in Tennessee and one of the wealthiest in the whole country.

In 1849, Adelicia was remarried to Joseph Acklen, who was an attorney from Alabama. Together they built Belmont Mansion (originally called Belle Monte) as a summer home to escape the heat of their plantations in Louisiana. Belmont, which sat on 180 acres of land, was completed in 1853. It had numerous outbuildings, gardens, a 200-foot long greenhouse and conservatory, a water tower to provide water for all the plants, a zoo, and a guest house that in addition to guest quarters also contained an art gallery and bowling alley.

Our tour started with a brief stop in the entry hall then went to the second floor where the master and children's bedrooms were located. Adelicia and her second husband had 6 children, 4 of whom survived to adulthood.

Master bedroom

Off the master bedroom was the trunk room. Back in those times, ladies' dresses contained yards and yards of fabric. There were no closets yet, much less the type of large walk-in closets we have today, and the dresses would have been too large and too heavy to hang in the armoir. Therefore, ladies' dresses were typically folded and placed in trunks for storage. By the way, that is the original paint on the floor of the trunk room shown below.

Trunk room with original paint on the floor

One room on the second floor was used as a schoolroom where tutors home schooled the children. The table in the schoolroom contained items that would have been typically used for educational purposes back in the day. When we saw the slate with the math problems, we were reminded how much simpler math was back then before New Math and Common Core.

Educational items in the schoolroom

After touring the upstairs, we went back downstairs. The large salon at the bottom of the graceful stairs was originally the back porch. The porch was enclosed to create the salon, which was used for entertaining, and the stairs were added during a renovation that was done by the Acklens in 1859. There was originally a compact, spiral staircase to the second floor.

First floor salon that was originally the back porch

Staircase to the second floor

The first floor has a large dining room, which could accommodate large dinner parties.

Formal dining room

Also on the first floor is the parlor. The parlor would have been used by the family and for entertaining close friends.

Parlor

The painting behind the piano in the photo above is of three of the four children Adelicia had with her first husband. The fourth wasn't included in the painting because he only survived a day or two after birth. As we said, none of these children survived to adulthood.

Three of the four children from Adelicia's first marriage

Fortunately, Belmont survived the Civil War intact. Only the grounds were damaged during a two-week occupation by Union troops prior to the Battle of Nashville in 1864.

Adelicia's second husband, Joseph, died in 1863 during the Civil War while in Louisiana managing Adelicia's plantations. By the way, Joseph Acklen did an excellent job with the plantations. He tripled the value of Adelicia's holdings from its original $1 million.

In 1867, Adelicia married Dr. William Cheatham, a prominent Nashville physician. The couple eventually separated, and Adelicia began spending more and more time in Washington, DC.

In 1887, Adelicia sold Belmont to a land developer and moved to Washington permanently. Later that year, she came down with pneumonia while on a shopping trip to New York and died.

Two women from Philadelphia bought Belmont and opened a girls' school in 1890. The school later merged with Ward Seminary and became Ward-Belmont. In 1952, the school changed hands and became today's Belmont University, which is a Christian, co-ed, liberal arts school.

The tour guides, who were probably students at the university, were excellent. They were very knowledgeable and enthusiastic. They knew the history of the house and of the family very well, and the way they told the Adelicia's story made her seem very real.

From Belmont we headed back toward Cedar Creek. On the way, we stopped for lupper at a Mexican restaurant located a short distance down the road from the campground called Cinco de Mayo. There were always a lot of cars there every time we passed, and they got pretty good online reviews.

Cinco de Mayo Mexican restaurant

We started off with traditional corn chips and salsa.

Paul sampling the corn chips and salsa

Cinco de Mayo has lunch specials for about $5 to $7 and dinners for around $7 to $13. We both had a combo platter with a taco, a chile relleno and a beef enchilada that also included rice and refried beans for $8.25.

We thought the food at Cinco de Mayo was only average. The cheese they used was excellent, but the beef in the taco, enchilada and chile relleno was a little bland and needed salt. The salsa had pretty good flavor, but it was a little runny. We also like more cilantro in our salsa.

The weather forecast was calling for an 80% chance of rain on Tuesday, so we planned to hang around the campground. We had more activities scheduled for the remainder of our stay in the Nashville area, so stay tuned.

More Pink Palace

West Memphis, AR - Events of Monday, June 16, 2014

After finishing the natural history section of the Pink Palace Museum, we headed to the second floor where there were exhibits on the human history of the Memphis area.

Native Americans first arrived in the area about 11,000 years ago. They hunted and gathered food along the fertile Mississippi River and its tributaries. Over time, they began to stay for longer periods. They began to build more permanent houses and started farming. The first villages began to appear about 2,500 years ago. The museum had a display of Mississippian pottery and tools.

Europeans first came to the area in 1541. We learned about Hernando De Soto's expedition this past February when we visited the De Soto National Memorial in Bradenton, FL. Click here to read about that visit and the De Soto expedition.

When French explorers arrived in 1673, most of the farms and villages of the Mississippian people were gone, and swamps and forests had reclaimed much the land. The Native American population had been decimated by disease introduced by the Europeans. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, European settlers began to arrive in the area in larger numbers and pushed the few remaining Indians out.

Artifacts of early European explorers and settlers

Margery checking out tools the settlers used to build log cabins

Re-creation of a one-room log cabin

The city of Memphis was chartered in 1826. The demand for cotton was growing because the invention of the cotton gin in the late 1700s brought down the price of cotton and the Industrial Revolution in the early 1800s brought down the price of fabric made from cotton. In the 1840s, Memphis was undergoing a boom as cheap land for growing cotton and the presence of the Mississippi River for transportation attracted even more new residents. By 1860, Memphis rivaled St. Louis and New Orleans.

Not only did the Industrial Revolution make fabric and clothing less expensive, but it also made possible the manufacture of affordable furniture. Memphis had a growing and prosperous middle class. The photo below shows a typical, early Victorian, middle-class parlor.

Victorian-era furnishings and clothing

Tennessee seceded from the Union in 1861 and briefly became a Confederate stronghold until it was captured by the Union in 1862.

Civil War display

Memphis was occupied by Union forces for the remainder of the war. Because of its strategic location on the Mississippi, Memphis became a Union supply base. As a result of the war and the Reconstruction period that followed, the economy of Memphis became depressed.

Just as the city finally began to slowly recover from the aftermath of the war, yellow fever epidemics in the 1870s further devastated the economy. Things got so bad, the city declared bankruptcy in 1879 and lost its city charter. Memphis emerged from bankruptcy in the 1880s and was rechartered in 1893. Memphis entered the 1900s as a fairly prosperous center for the cotton trade.

In our last post, we mentioned how Clarance Saunders began building the Pink Palace mansion in 1922. Building of the mansion was made possible by Suanders' success in the grocery business. Clarance Saunders had established a large grocery wholesale company in Memphis in the early 1900s; and in 1916, he decided to open his own grocery store which he called the Piggly Wiggly. The museum has a replica of the original Piggly Wiggly Saunders built on Jefferson Avenue in Mmephis.

Replica of the first Piggly Wiggly

Piggly Wiggly was the first true self-service grocery store. Customers, who were given shopping baskets, entered the store through a turnstile, made their way up and down the aisles picking up groceries as they went, and ended up at the check-out counter at the front of the store. By 1922, Piggly Wiggly had 1241 stores. The concept was so successful, other grocery stores quickly entered the self service market.

Inside the Piggly Wiggly

As we also mentioned in our last post, Saunders encountered financial difficulty as the result of some attempted stock market wrangling. He declared bankruptcy in 1923, lost his Piggly Wiggly empire and lost his unfinished Pink Palace mansion. We also explained how investors who bought Saunders' estate for the land eventually donated the mansion to the city of Memphis to be made into a museum.

From the Piggly Wiggly, we crossed the mezzanine to the mansion itself where there is a continuation of the cultural history of Memphis. There was a small display on the music of Memphis and on WWII.

There was also a display on the importance of cotton in Memphis. In 1931, Memphis and the rest of the country were in the throes of the Great Depression. A Memphis businessman proposed "cotton week" to promote the use of cotton. The Cotton Carnival, now called Carnival Memphis, was born. The carnival is held in the spring. It is a bit like Mardi Gras with parades, kings and queens, parties and a ball. It has been expanded to also include charitable events.

Costumes of past Carnival Memphis royalty

After we finished up in the mansion, we headed out to the mezzanine where there was one more exhibit to see. It was a temporary exhibit about insects called Twice Bitten. The exhibit featured several super-size insect heads including a bee depicted at 200 times actual size.

Bee 200 times actual size

There were also several gigantic, robotic insects including the praying mantis shown below.

Robotic praying mantis

Also included in the exhibit were about a dozen live tarantulas. The one shown below is a Mexican red knee.

Mexican red knee tarantula

After seeing the Twice Bitten exhibit, it was a little before 1:00, which was perfect timing for the 3D IMAX movie. The movie was on Jerusalem and was done by National Geographic, so the photography was excellent. It was interesting to see how Jerusalem became the focus of three major religions - Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

By the time the movie was over, it was almost 2:00, and we were hungry. As luck would have it, Central BBQ is right down the street from the Pink Palace.

Central BBQ

Central BBQ is our favorite place in Memphis to get ribs. Their ribs are prepared with dry rub. There are several kinds of sauce available - regular, mustard-based, vinegar-based and hot. We liked the regular, which is thick and sweet, mixed with vinegar-based sauce to cut the sweetness.

We had a slab of ribs for two for $25, which includes four sides. For our sides, we shared potato salad, onion rings, pork rinds, and mac and cheese. We usually like slaw with our barbecue, but we remembered from last year their slaw is a little too tart for our taste. The potato salad and onion rings were good, and the mac and cheese was okay. This was the first time either one of us had pork rinds, and we didn't care for them. The ribs, however, were delicious. They were smoky and meaty.

Margery with our slab of ribs

With our bellies full, we headed back to the motor home to relax the rest of the afternoon and evening and to watch the barges go up and down the river. Our time in Memphis was almost over. Stay tuned to find out where we headed next.

Pink Palace

West Memphis, AR - Events of Monday, June16, 2014

Almost all the sightseeing attractions in the Memphis area are closed on Mondays. It just so happens, however, there was one we wanted to see on this visit that was open. It was the Memphis Pink Palace Museum.

Grocery entrepreneur Clarance Saunders bought 155 acres of land in 1922 and began building a mansion. Pink Palace was the name given by local newspapers to the mansion because of the pink Georgian marble that was used for the facade.

Pink Place

Unfortunately, Saunders ran into difficulty with the stock market in 1923, went bankrupt, lost his grocery empire, and lost the mansion he was building before it could be completed. A group of real estate developers bought the estate, subdivided the land and resold it as smaller lots. No one was interested in the unfinished mansion, and the developers were eventually persuaded to donate the Pink Palace and 4 acres of land to the city of Memphis to be used as a museum. The museum, which specializes in the natural and the cultural history of the mid-south, opened to the public in 1930.

By 1977, the museum had run out of room, and work was begun on a new wing. Most of the museum's exhibits are now contained in the new section, but there are still a few exhibits, a ballroom and a large theater in the mansion itself.

In addition to the museum and mansion, there are also a planetarium and an IMAX theater. Admission to the museum alone is $12.75 for adults ($12.50 for seniors). Combo tickets that include the museum, planetarium and/or IMAX movie are also available. We opted to see the museum and the IMAX movie on Jerusalem for $18.75. We arrived a couple of hours ahead of the 1:00 start time for the movie so we would have time to see the museum first.

We started our museum tour with the natural history section located on the first floor. In the skeleton room where there were skeletons of birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and even humans on display. One skeleton we found particularly interesting was that of a python. The python, which was from the Memphis Zoo, died recently as the result of a feeding dispute with another python.

Skeleton of a python

The next area had displays of birds and mammals that are native to the mid-south.

Birds of prey

The museum also explored the world of microscopic organisms with a series of displays on the development of the microscope. Although simple magnifying lenses existed from as early as 1000 AD, the use of multiple lenses to create a compound microscope didn't take place until the 1600s.

Early microscope

The museum had several images of fleas representing the progress of microscopes over the years. The image at the left of the photo below is from an early microscope. It is little more than an enlarged shadow. The image in the center represents what we would expect to see with a modern optical microscope. To the right is an image from a modern electron scanning microscope. Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Microscope images (l to r) early microscope, modern optical microscope, modern electron scanning microscope

Another area of the museum had various displays of insects.

Butterflies and moths

The geology section featured numerous specimens of rocks, minerals and crystals from all over the world.

A few of the many specimens of rocks and minerals

There were also a couple of very large specimens on display like the two-foot quartz crystal shown below.

Two-foot tall quartz crystal

The geological area also featured an exhibit on earthquakes. We knew about the threat of earthquakes in California, the Pacific northwest, Alaska and Hawaii; but we were surprised to learn the area to the north of Memphis also has the threat of strong earthquakes as indicated by the red area in the center of the map below.

Earthquake threats - areas of potentially strong earthquakes shown in red

Another interesting display explained different types of fossils and how they are formed. Some fossils are castings of the original object that are formed when the object decays and mud fills the void left by the object and hardens. Some fossils are formed when minerals take the place of tissues in the original object (petrified wood is a good example), and some are impressions formed by traces of carbon left behind after the rest of the elements in an object decay.

Display showing different types of fossils

One of the largest fossils on display was a mosasaur, which is a large, extinct marine reptile.

Mosasaur fossil

And what would a natural history exhibit be without an animatronic dinosaur. The t. rex roars, sways its head and wags its tail.

Animatronic t. rex

After seeing the natural history section on the first floor, we still had plenty of time before the IMAX movie. That was a good thing because there was still much more to see. We'll tell you about the rest of our visit to the Pink Palace in our next post.