Ducks and Ribs in one day....

Wow!  Two posts in two days!  Not sure we can keep up this pace.

As we mentioned yesterday, our friends Fred and Vickie had left Memphis, and there were a couple of things we were going to do together.  Bob is anal about planning.  Connie just wants to know what time the bus is leaving.  She'll be on it.  Fred and Vickie are on the loose plan which works great for them.

One thing we've learned by coming to an area and staying for a month (or longer!) is it's so easy to say we're going to do this, this, and this.  Then put it off.  Until you're at the end of your time and you haven't done nearly what you'd like to.  For us, if we don't allocate a day to do this, a day to do that, we have found that we don't get things done.

So, looking at our last two weeks in Memphis, it was time to start allocating days to hit our targets.  One was the Ducks at the Peabody Hotel, and this morning was a great fit.  Pretty fascinating story you can read here.

We got to the Hotel at 10:25a for the 11:00a parade.  Very well heeled crowd.  Hotel "bouncers" were very good to say that there's no standing in the lobby and since they do it every day, twice a day, had the routine down.  We had great seats, everything was very calm until the last second.  Then it was bedlam.

5 minutes prior to the ducks,
and you'll notice the chair
to our left is empty.

5 minutes before it started, a woman took the chair to our left and asks if we can still see.  We could.  Then her husband/boyfriend, we'll call him "Dick" comes rolling in and kneels right in front of us with this huge, telephoto lens.  "Now, we can't."  He slid a little over towards Mrs. Dick.  We knew this guy was going to be trouble.  Sure enough, the elevator door opens, and "Dick" goes all paparazzi on the ducks in front of us and 'boom', it's over.  It was a little underwhelming.

You can see our video here.

The hotel itself was wonderful.  It's the essence of modernizing something while maintaining it's beauty of the time period.  The lobby phones were rotary dial, circa the 30's.  There was a piano built specifically for Francis Scott Key.  The ballrooms were terrific.  Beautifully preserved, but yet 2012 functional.


After the Peabody, we headed off to find Memphis' best ribs at Charles Vergos' Rendezvous.  It had a 2nd street address, but was basically in the alley behind 2nd street and the Holiday Inn that faced the Peabody.  They weren't 'open', which meant they weren't serving a full menu.  But, you could get a large or small order of ribs, baked beans and slaw (like we've never had!).  It was terrific, and probably had 10-15 tables full (with many of the people we saw over at the Peabody.)  Top 5 for rib places for us (Maybe Connie's #1).

Great day in Indy!

We've been to Indy a few times, so we're looking for a couple of things to go see and get us out of the rig on these hot days.  We chose to go to the Canal and White River State Park.

We started with the USS Indianapolis Memorial.  The USS Indianapolis was the ship to transported the Atomic Bomb during WWII.  It was so secretive, that when it was torpedoed on July 30, 1945 by the Japanese, it wasn't missed.  Of 1,196 men on board, approximately 300 went down with the ship. The remainder, about 900 men, were left floating in shark-infested waters with no lifeboats and most with no food or water. The ship was never missed, and by the time the survivors were spotted by accident four days later only 316 men were still alive.

Indy has done a terrific job of upgrading their downtown living around the canal.  Beautiful condos overlooking the walk.  Has to bring a ton of people downtown.

Got to see a stadium!  We toured Lucas Oil Stadium (home of next year's Super Bowl and the Big Ten Championship) last year.  Here is the home of the AAA affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Indianapolis Indians.

This has been a bit of a AAA tour.  Starting with Tucson (AAA home of the Padres), we've been to Albuquerque (AAA home of the Dodgers), Oklahoma City (AAA home of the Astros) and now Indianapolis.

The canal walk featured great views of downtown

 We also saw the home of the NCAA and Hall of Champions.  I believe this is where the Tournament Committee meets to decide the March Tournament.

And finally, we saw Conseco Fieldhouse, NBA home of the Pacers and home to the Big Ten Tournament on a number of occasions.

So we bought a grill a month back for a few reasons:  it had two burners, a built in thermometer and would fit in the truck when we load up and roll to the next stop.  Did my first smoking attempt on this grill tonight and it was delish!  Had a half rack of ribs left over from a while back.  Connie put a rub consisting of brown sugar, garlic salt and paprika on them, I put my smoker box with apple chips on the opposite burner and smoked those babies with indirect heat for almost five hours.  Put BBQ sauce in our pot for the fourth hour, then started applying the sauce a half hour later.  Put a couple of baked potatoes on in the second hour and moved them over direct heat on the warming rack for the last two hours.