Oh, Memphis. One of the coolest cities in the United States. Home to so many musicians and artists that it would be difficult to keep track of them all. This city has some seriously good energy and is a wonderful place to visit and even to live. But what can you do while you’re in Memphis to make sure that you’re truly fully capitalizing on everything this city has to offer? Well, the short answer is a lot. There’s no real way to go wrong while you’re in town.
We’re going to look at some of the best ways for you to spend your time in town so you can make sure that you fully appreciate the city for everything that it’s worth. It doesn’t matter if you’re a local that’s lived in town for your entire life or you’re someone who’s just passing through and wanted to see the city for yourself, you still deserve to have a great time while you’re visiting. If you are looking for some interesting things to do, you have found the right place.
Table of Contents
Go Out and See the Beautiful Memphis Sites
Memphis is a hub for music history, and for history in general. If you want to be sure that you’re making the most of your visit you’re going to want to make sure to get out into the city and see some of these sites for yourself. You could realistically spend hours driving around the city to go look at everything that it has to see and still not run out of things.
One of the most popular places to go see is Graceland, Elvis’s home where he lived and later died. If you like Elvis you’ll be happy to know that Graceland isn’t the only Elvis-related site that you can go visit, his old recording room at Sun Studio is another popular place to visit. You can go and see where the king of rock and roll recorded some of his most iconic tracks.
If you want to see one of the oddest and, arguably greatest, things in Memphis, make sure you head down to the Peabody. You’ll more than likely come face to face with a flock of North American mallards making their rounds. At about 11:00 AM the ducks make their way up to the roof of this historic hotel, of course following the red carpet all the way up. At 5:00 PM the ducks make their way back down to their home, again, following the red carpet all the way down. These ducks seem to know who the real stars of the show are, and they have since the 1940s.
Visit Some of Memphis’ Museums
One thing that Memphis has no shortage of is museums. You can find a museum for just about anything in town, which leads to a pretty interesting and educational experience that can be fun for the whole family. Regardless of what kind of museums catch your interest, you’re likely to find one in Memphis.
One of the most popular museums is the Slave Haven Underground Railroad Museum. If you’re interested in pre-civil war era history you’ll have an especially good time. The museum is also called the Burkle Estate, and it was often used to hide runaway slaves that were on the underground railroad. The owner at the time, a Mr. Jacob Burkle, was staunchly against slavery. The house was designed with all sorts of secret passages to help the slaves escape if the authorities showed up.
Today, his house stands as a stark reminder of the mistakes of our past. Most people that visit notice that the actual museum area is pretty small, but it provides a lot of information about what was going on at that house during the underground railroad.
That’s just one of the many museums that you can go visit, so even if that doesn’t interest you much you can still find something else that will. In fact, you might even find yourself being more interested in the Stax Museum of Soul Music. That museum is actually in the old Stax Recording Studio building, and it contains hundreds of relics from the golden age of soul music. With interactive exhibits, short films, and galleries you’re sure to have a great time whether you bring family, friends, or go alone.
Learning about history in such a magical city is most certainly an experience worth having, and there are a lot more museums than we had room to list here. You could easily spend days or even weeks finding all of the neat museums in Memphis and making your rounds to make sure that you learn about everything the city has to teach you about.
Get in a Good Go-Kart Race
If you’re looking for a super fun way to kill a few hours, look no further than Memphis’ own indoor go-kart track. The go-karts they use here are seriously impressive and will give you that little adrenaline rush that any good day out needs to really feel complete.
The setup that this particular go-kart facility has is impressive, to say the least. Firstly, the go-karts are fully electric. That’s actually how they’re able to have these races indoors. Because the karts aren’t gas-powered, they don’t have any emissions. One of the biggest shortcomings of traditional gas-powered go-kart racing is the fact that it has to be done outdoors. If it rained, the track would have to close down for the whole day. If it was too hot, you just had to deal with it. Indoor go-karting allows you to race no matter the weather in a climate-controlled building. Rain, snow, or even sun, the races can go on.
You may be thinking that because the go-karts are electric that they’d be slow, but you’d be mistaken. If you’ve been paying attention to the evolution of electric motors over the last few years, especially through car manufacturers like Tesla, you know that electric motors have come a long way.
The go-karts used that this facility are no exception. The engines are designed in Italy for safety and performance and boast 20 horsepower. With all that power, these go-karts can reach top speeds of 50 miles an hour. That speed and power combined with their track that can fit up to ten karts per race almost guarantees a challenging race every time. If you can’t find a good challenge on a normal day, you could always try to come back when they’re hosting one of their leagues. The leagues at this facility always bring stiff competition, and no matter how good a go-kart racer you are, you’ll be able to find a good challenge.
If you have some safety concerns about go-karts going 50 miles an hour, you’d be happy to know that they thought of that too. Everything from the helmets they provide to the karts to the track is designed with safety in mind. The facility can even stop the karts mid-race if they need to and will kick racers out with no refund if they repeatedly break the safety rules. It’s always nice when you find a go-kart facility that cares as much about your safety as you do.
Enjoy the Legendary Memphis Night Life Scene
Memphis is known for a lot of things, and its nightlife scene is one of them. If you’re looking for a good way to spend an evening, it could be worth your time to peruse the streets and see what’s going on. On any given night it’s not uncommon to find clubs with blaring music, small venue concerts, and all sorts of other things. If you get really lucky, you might be able to visit a bar that has a roof area they’ll let you hang out in so you can enjoy a drink or two while overlooking the gorgeous Memphis skyline at night.
Even if you aren’t much of a drinker you can still gain something from enjoying the ambience and energy of Memphis at night. It truly is something that just needs to be experienced. It would take an incredibly skilled writer to truly capture the essence of Memphis at night, and even then there’s a good chance they wouldn’t do it justice.
If you do decide to get a taste of the Memphis nightlife for yourself, make sure you head on down to Beale Street. Beale is the birthplace of Blues and is where many incredible Blues musicians started their careers. There’s something awe-inspiring and humbling about standing in the same place that musicians such as BB kind stood before their career really took off.
Never a Dull Moment in Memphis, Tennessee
If you’re going to visit somewhere, it might as well be Memphis. Enjoy the fresh air while you experience a city that has done more for music than most other cities in the entire United States combined. Bring your family, your friends, even your co-workers along and experience the city that wants nothing more than to bring music into the world to be enjoyed by everyone.
