More Friends & the Zoo

Saturday afternoon found us driving over to Steve and Patty's house in Creve Couer for dinner and to watch the Cards on TV (are you catching a theme that we watch a lot of Cardinals games?!?) Mikey and Abby got to go along on this trip as Patty said she missed having doggies around and enjoyed being around ours the week before. Thanks to Mother Nature, the game in Chicago started an hour late due to rain and then midway through there was another rain delay! Of course, this delayed the start of dinner as we couldn't be away from the TV cooking dinner while the game was on! The game finally ended with the Cardinals losing by one run, so all we could do was eat. We dined on salad, rib-eye, potato casserole, corn, and garlic bread all with a bottle of Zinfandel. All was delicious and not a bad way to drown your sorrows.

Russ left at 5:45 a.m. Sunday morning to go play golf (got to get those early tee times in this heat!), and I met up with 4 of my best girlfriends from high school for lunch. Diane, Dana, Gloria, Ellen, and I have been friends since freshman year and have always stayed in touch. Of course, it seems like it takes me coming in town and organizing a get-together for them to get together!! Another friend couldn't make it but hopefully I'll get to see her before I leave town. We met at Culpepper's, not a fancy place, but a nice, casual place where we could hang for a couple hours, laugh, catch up on each other's lives (complete with photos), and reminisce about another one of our friends who passed away a few years ago. We plan to get together a couple more times while I'm here, but coordinating everyone's schedule can sure be challenging!

Later that day Russ and I took a drive down a portion Old Historic Route 66, since it's right outside the campgrounds here. We passed what we believe was once a gas station on the Route, drove through the downtown section of Eureka and the town of Pacific just as the Amtrak train was arriving from St. Louis.










Today we awoke to light rain and thought it might be a great day to go to the St. Louis Zoo (http://www.stlzoo.org/zoo.org/). We were right....lots of animals out, not as warm, and not many people. The St. Louis Zoo, located on 77 acres, is definitely one of the nation's best and is absolutely free! A few of the shows charge a fee, but there is no charge for entrance to the zoo itself, which houses over 11,000 animals. The World's Fair Flight Cage dates back to 1904 and also houses the Cypress Swamp. In this "cage" one walks right through the exhibit with the birds perched all around and flying above you. There are very few cages at this zoo with many of the animals being almost close enough to touch. One of the funniest things we saw today was a polar bear who kept swimming in circles on his back with a leaf in his mouth!

Growing up in St. Louis, the Zoo was one of my favorite places, and I loved spending time there. While in college, we had to do a project on some animal or species at the Zoo, and I spent many hours in the Primate House watching a little family of four Colobus monkeys. Though I didn't get any pictures of them today, we did take some other photos we hope you'll enjoy.

After leaving the Zoo, we drove around Forest Park again, taking pictures of the Art Museum and the statue of Saint Louis located in front of it. The beauty of this park continually amazes me.