Since Hurricane Mathew took over the coast line this fall break, we decided on a getaway a little more inland.
St. Louis was our destination for this trip. I have wanted to see and experience the St. Louis Arch for a while now, and oh how perfect our room view was. I spent quite a bit of time just admiring it from our hotel window.
When we went to dinner on Sunday evening, October 9, we ran smack into the Hillary Clinton convoy on their way to the debate.
After all of the commotion, we ventured on to our dinner destination...Sugarfire.
We can't visit St. Louis without tasting some St. Louis barbeque.
We stopped by the City Garden to check out some of the cool and random sculptures.
Seeing this Head Sculpture was actually on my "things to see" list.
That is two of the apples of my eyes staring back at me.
I caught a shot of Brooke holding up the arch that night.
The next morning, once we got Brooke out of the bed, we ventured out for a closer look of the arch.
We rode to the top in a tiny capsule for five from the south side of the arch until we stopped 630 feet above the ground.
The Mississippi river is on the east side of the arch.
You can actually see the shadow of the arch in this view of the west side.
After hanging out and getting photos of the views, we rode back down the north side of the arch so that we can say we have traveled all the way from one side to the other.
Hard to believe you can actually travel to the top.
We toured Anheuser Busch brewery and seen several of the Clydesdale's. The tour wasn't that cool for us, but we did get a free Dr. Pepper at the ende
This is the brewing building, but I'm sure they had a cooler name for it on the tour...I wasn't really paying attention.
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We headed straight to the St. Louis Zoo after the Anheiser Busch tour.
This zoo was great. All of the animals were awake and active. Most zoo's have animals that you have to play "where's waldo" at every exhibit just to find a sleeping animal. Not this one.
They were up and engaged. Not to mention, the layout was perfect. There were mostly deep culverts between visitors and the animals instead of 30 foot fences like there are at other zoo's. It felt like the animals could have walked up to us with the design of the exhibits.
Brooke actually took all of those photos in the collage above.
Still can't get over everything being so active. I'm used to the zoo's where it is like a game of "Where's Waldo" only to find a tiny glimpse of a sleeping animal in the back corner of the enclosure.
I'm sure the other visitors were entertained by our excitement.
Next, we headed over to the Boat House for dinner by the water.
The jewel box was another stop on my "things to see" list. I wanted to take a look at this glass green house at Forrest Park, but we only got to view it from the outside because it was closed at the time.
To the Delmar Loop for an apple crisp dessert at Fitz's
We had to stop for some Strange Donuts while in St. Louis.
I got Campfire (like a s'mores), Brooke got dirt with worns (Chocolate with crushed Oreo's and gummy worms) and Stroker got the Maple Bacon.
Take a look at my campfire doughnut with graham cracker coating...
My marshmallow was even toasted !
A St. Louis icon is the "toasted ravioli", so we tried those when we went to the Hill.
The hill is where the Italians live and have mastered the authentic toasted ravioli.
One thing we didn't get around to trying is the butter cake, another St, Louis icon.
All in all, I think we got in quite a bit of site seeing and site tasting during our visit.
This was such a fun trip. The only thing that coulda made it better was if Devin came along.
I miss the days that he didn't have to be an adult, and have a job, and refuse to take a day off.
Makes me want to travel more with Brooke even more...before the day comes that she is all grown up.
