Camel
Giraffe
Sea Lion
Elephants
More Elephants
Polar Bear
Okapi
Zebra
A Family Photo
Ok, so it's not really a tirade, but since I put our trip to Nevada here, I thought it was as good a place as any....
This trip is a little different of course, because of the recent acquisition of a digital camera -- nothing fancy, in fact after the rebates it was less than $60 -- but it takes about 22 (compressed JPEG) pictures which you then have to download to a computer, so I carted my ancient notebook along with us to serve as storage. This trip was a short 3 day deal to a timeshare resort south of St. Louis, hence the reference to the old song in the page title. Our check-in wasn't until 5:00 so we stopped by the Zoo in Forrest Park for a few hours, so Laura could see the big animals that our little local zoo can't even dream of having, such as....
Camel |
Giraffe |
Sea Lion |
Elephants |
More Elephants |
Polar Bear |
Okapi |
Zebra |
A Family Photo |
There are a few other photos from the zoo, but I don't want to spoil your visit. You will also notice that the Zebra is not compatible with my digital camera (Zebras do not normally have rainbow colored squares on their sides). Anyway, after several hours walking through the zoo, we head for the resort and discover a very important thing about St. Louis....
4 Interstate highways go through
St. Louis (I55, I44, I64, and I70 -- I270 and I255 form a loop around the city,
with I170 leading into Lambert Field). These 4 highways converge into one very
big highway in order to cross the bridge over the Mississippi, then split back
apart heading mostly south (55), south-east (44), east (64), and north east
(70). But due to the way the highways are routed through town, you cannot go
directly from 64 East to 55 South (and conversely, 55 North does not directly
connect to 64 West) -- so we ended up crossing back over the river, finding
a place to turn around (in East St. Louis, not exactly a big tourist spot),
and heading back the way we needed to go. We check in, unload the car, then
drive to Festus to pick up a few things at the local WalMart that we didn't
want to carry down with us (bread, milk, and hamburger), before going to bed
for the night.
The next day was spent swimming, eating, miniature golfing, listening to sales pitches, and more swimming....
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Laura made friends with the girl partially visible in the upper left corner of the top 2 pictures (her name was Kelly), and if you look at the top of the last picture, you'll find yours truly looking a little pink. After all that walking the day before, and swimming that day, we were pretty tired, and went to bed (after soaking in the whirlpool tub of course).
The next day arrives, hot and hazy, and we start packing up the car for our 10:00 check out time. We leave, and since we have to kill time until 3:00 p.m. (I wanted to visit my cousin in the hospital), we decided to see if I could find my late great-grandmothers house. It took some verifying of local landmarks, but we finally zoomed in on the house (my mother verified the pictures as being of the correct house, but I'm not posting them here -- I don't know who lives there now, and they might not appreciate it). We then headed back to downtown St Louis and decided to visit the arch. We went up to the top (in an egg shaped tram car -- it's a very memorable ride), then looked around the museum at the bottom before leaving to have lunch.
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The scales Laura is sitting on are at the south tram waiting area, the one with yet another new friend and the teepee are from the museum underneath the arch. The last picture is where we ate lunch. The next picture is a partial photo-mosaic of the pictures I took from the top of the arch. It would have worked out a lot better if I'd used a tripod, and taken a few more pictures -- but I didn't think about making this until after the I saw the pictures I ended up with.
After lunch we went to Barnes hospital to visit my cousin (she'd had a major car accident a month before, and is still in recovery). Fortunately, we met up with her mother on the way in, so she led us through the rather confusing route to get to my cousin's room (Barnes is a big hospital to begin with, and they're in a new building program). We visited for a while, then got back into the car and headed home, tired but pleased with our journey.
And we did it all without having to deal with Northwest Airlines!!