FAMILY TRAVEL
Take a Weekend in Memphis – Fun for the Whole Family By Carol Muse Evans
Looking for a family destination a little different? Try Memphis, Tennessee, Home of the Blues and the Birthplace of Rock and Roll, and just a 3½-hour drive on Interstate 22 from Birmingham. There’s plenty to see and do here for families and folks of all ages to enjoy. A great place to stay – and visit – is the Big Cypress Lodge and Bass Pro Shop that now lives in the famous “pyramid” at the edge of the Mississippi River in downtown Memphis. It first opened as a sports arena in 1991. It didn’t last too long as a sports arena and was shuttered about 2004. (For a fascinating look at its history, visit www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-29/ how-memphis-made-a-kind-of-great-american-pyramid.) In 2005, Johnny Morris, founder of Bass Pro Shops and Big Cypress Lodge, was fishing on the Mississippi with a friend and made a bet about catching a 30-pound catfish. If they caught one, Morris said he’d build a Bass Pro Shop in the pyramid. His buddy Jack caught a 30-pounder near the end of the fishing trip.
Carol Muse Evans is publisher and editor of Birmingham Parent.
Photo courtesy of Big Cypress Lodge.
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The pyramid is home to much more than a Bass Pro Shop, although it’s a fun place to visit on its own. There are numerous restaurants, a 600,000-gallon Cypress Swamp, an alligator habitat, shooting gallery, Ducks Unlimited Waterfowling Heritage Center, an ocean-themed bowling alley and aquarium and fish feeding. The pyramid also boasts the nation’s tallest 28-story freestanding glass elevator, where you can take a ride – for a fee – to the top of the pyramid and see an amazing view of Memphis and the Mississippi River, as well as eat at the Lookout restaurant there. The Cypress Lodge, which lives above the store, is an amazing homage to the outdoors and the beautifully put together rooms feel like a mountain lodge, a little piece of the outdoors inside. For more general information about all Memphis has to offer, visit https://www.memphistravel.com/.
