Blogs from St Louis, Missouri, United States, North America

We left Jellystone at 7:30am and set out for the Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis. We had plenty of time before our tram ride up the arch, so we decided to swing by Louisiana, Missouri, on our way to St. Louis. Andrew's paternal grandmother grew up in Louisiana, Missouri, right on the Mississippi River. In fact, their home overlooked the river! Today, there's an empty lot where the home stood, but it was still nice getting to see where she grew up. The town is cute and very small. It was the front of their house that overlooked the river, but they could also walk a couple blocks away from the river into town. It was probably a great place to grow up! After our stop in Louisiana, we continued our drive to St. ... read more

October 14th – 15thOctober 2022 We arrived in St Louis in the evening and we only had the one night at the hotel. We already had dinner on the road, so we checked in, left our bags in the room and went out to see the Gateway Arch. It was nice to take a night time walk – my night time photography isn’t all that but I am working on it. I got a few pics and we set off back to the hotel as we had a long day and were both tired, plus we had another long drive the following morning. From St Louis, we made our way to the Route 66 State Park in Eureka for a stamp on the passport and a few photos. From there, we drove to the Fanning Outpost ... read more

I got a fairly early start-7:00 AM, not bad. We said our goodbyes and even my grand nephew, Noah got in on the act. The route I took was designed to get me as much riding in Illinois on US 50, so I went straight south on two lane highways to Olney, IL where I headed west on US 50. It made the trip to South County St. Louis considerably longer. It was 360 miles to the hotel. I got in at 3:00 PM. It was a fairly uneventful trip with the only crummy time having to ride the interstates to get around St. Louis. I caught a couple light showers and put on the rain gear for a couple hours, no big deal. It was overcast the whole way so that kept the heat from ... read more

Back in 1994 we took our 1st ocean cruise. Fast forward to today and it is almost time for us to take our 21stcruise. On some of our previous cruises we have done some really unusual things (like riding an overgrown wicker basket down the streets of Funchal Madera, or walking on the Athabasca Glacier in the Canadian Rockies, or transiting through the locks of the Panama Canal), and have seen some remarkable things (like the 12 Apostles jutting up from the sea along the Great Ocean Road in southern Australia, or seeing the 70 meter hand-stitched Bayeux Tapestry), and have visited some incredible locations (like the palaces of St Petersburg, the Cathedrals of Rome, or rounding Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America). Yes there have been some real special highlights during many ... read more

Note the ‘que’ in parque. You might think it exudes elegance. Up and out of Branson at 8:30 Saturday morning. We had a 270 or so mile trip to St. Louis, one of our longest days, over roads we were not sure were not flooded (sorry, something about double negatives there.) I find the MODot web site very poor, and the app that you must download to use the website on your iPhone is even worse. Very frustrating. Google maps wasn’t much better for showing us closed roads. Son, Tim, suggested WAZE and the problem with that, if there are no cars driving on the road there is no data for that road and the app doesn’t show the roads closed. We drove by the seat of our pants. The condition of the US and Interstate ... read more