Day 4 - St Louis to Evansville, IL

We were planning on meeting our second cousin, Mary Ann, and going to Carmi today for some genealogy research, but about an hour out of town, we hit a huge rain storm.  It also started to get foggy (pea soup foggy) so Mimi decided that it was just too dangerous to drive.  She pulled off at the next exit and we found ourselves in the parking lot of K-Mart.

We ran through the rain to get inside and then did a little shopping.  We browsed for Father's Day cards.




After browsing through a meager 3 rows of Father's Day cards, we wished we had washed up on the shores of a Hallmark Card shop instead.




Amelia found some balloons.




We picked up some super glue, chocolate and a few more things.  The major portion of the storm front had passed us by this point, but when I looked at the radar on my phone, the storm was still between us and Carmi.  We were rather uncertain if we would catch up to the storm if we headed out so we decided to have lunch before moving on. Once again we followed our motto, "When in doubt, Eat."

It was lucky Mimi pulled off at the exit she did, because we discovered a Joe's Crab Shack right by us.  How could we pass up crab legs?



Oh my, the crab was so good. Hooray for storm stops.






After lunch, we headed for Mary Ann's house again. It rained all the way there, but the bad part of the storm had either dissipated or moved on.  Mary Ann and her husband Ron lived in an adorable little house and welcomed us warmly even though we were about 5 hours late.

We were thrilled when Mary Ann showed us another fantastic old picture that she had found from her grandmother.  This one was from about 1903 and was a class photo from Fields School in old Shawneetown.  It contained 3 of our relatives.  Aunt Sallie (Mary Ann's grandmother) is on the top row, second from the right.  Uncle Harry and Aunt Ethel are both on the second row from the top.  Uncle Harry is first from the left and Aunt Ethel is standing next to him - second on the left.

We were so delayed by the storm, that we decided we couldn't make it to Carmi today.  Instead, we were going to head through old Shawneetown and then spend the night in Evansville.  On our way, we remembered that our cousin Mary Ann had told us that our other cousin (also named Mary Ann) still lived nearby in McLeansboro.  We called her to see if she wanted to visit with us and after a little bit of phone tag, ended up at her house chatting with her and her little brother John David.  Mary Ann #2 wanted us to come back on our way back home and generously invited us to stay with her for a couple of nights.  She wanted us to meet her family and also look through a box of her mother's old pictures.  We are really looking forward to seeing her again next week.


After all the visiting we were much later getting to Evansville than we expected.  It was about 9pm and we were starving so we decided to pick up a little snack from Outback.






Sweet Pea conked out almost immediately.   She is turning into a super traveler.




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Day 3 - St. Louis City Museum

Today we went to the amazing City Museum in St. Louis.  It is hard to describe and is mostly made from salvaged architectural pieces and "junk" from around St. Louis.  Everything is designed to be touched, climbed over and crawled through.




Our first stop was an area known as "the caves" which was full of concrete tunnels.  I really regret not putting Sweet Pea in long pants though, because the ground was really rough on her tender knees.






We walked into the mouth of a giant whale.

There were ladders and stairs and hanging crawl spaces _everywhere_.  I knew that the City Museum was going to be fun, but it was even better than I expected.  It was mind blowing.





We found a slide that warned "The heavier you are, the faster you will go!" But Mimi was not to be deterred.  She went very fast.  lol.  And hurt her back a little bit.

We spent a bit of time in the "toddler" room, where Sweet Pea was able to play in a huge cage full of balls and Mimi was able to lay on a rubber ABC mat to do her back exercises, which luckily seemed to do the trick so we could get back to exploring.

We passed by an "Old Curiosity Shop" looking room where we met the "Snowflake Lady".  She showed us how to cut folded paper to make snowflakes that contained animals and objects hidden in their designs.  Sweet Pea made a dragonfly snowflake.  I cut out a "very hard" swallowtail butterfly snowflake and Mimi made the most beautiful of them all, which was a "very hard" fairy snowflake.  

We chose the "very hard" designs because she told us that she would laminate them for free if we were able to complete them.  Of course, we were up for the challenge and got our snowflakes laminated.  We had so much fun with her, that the Snowflake Lady invited us to come back after lunch to make Amish rag dolls with her.

We had some very tasty sandwiches for lunch at the Samwiches in the City restaurant.  Sweet Pea was crazy about her pretzel bread grilled cheese, which she unfortunately dropped on the floor before she finished.  There was a lot of crying.

After lunch, we returned for our lesson in making the Amish rag dolls.  You could choose to make a regular doll, a princess, a fairy, a ninja or a pirate.  We all chose to make fairies.  The lesson went very fast and was extremely stressful.  The Snowflake Lady turned out to be quite a taskmaster, but we were thrilled with the results.





Mimi's fairy "Marigold" is the redhead on the left.  Sweet Pea made the blond in the middle and named her "Clover".  My doll, "Lily", is the one with the red face and white hair on the right.   We have become surprisingly attached to them.  Aren't they beautiful?




Sweet Pea finished up the day at the City Museum by going down a 2 story slide, 3 times in a row.  We reluctantly left a truly magical place, with promises to return.








- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone. Location:St. Louis, MO

Day 2 - St. Louis - Cafe Provencal & The Magic House

Today for lunch we went to one of our favorite restaurants in St. Louis, Cafe Provencal.







We started with a wonderful steaming hot plate of escargot in garlicky butter sauce.




I ordered Beef Daube, which had such an amazing rich red wine flavor.



Mimi got fresh trout, which was perfectly cooked.  The fennel flavoring made it exquisite.  Mimi commented on what a very large piece of fish it was, but she somehow managed to eat every bit of it.




We loved this huge old poster for escargot.



After lunch we headed to a children's museum called The Magic House.

At the entrance, there is a lovely sculpture of children playing Ring-Around-The-Rosie with an opening space just the right size for a real child.  Mimi spent some time getting Sweet Pea adjusted so she could play too.

There were several other sculptures of animals.  It does not look like it in the photo, but this snake was extremely realistic and a bit terrifying.  Sweet Pea was brave enough to try to feed it.




Sweet Pea was able to ride in a train, blow the whistle and even shovel pretend coal into the hopper.




There were tons of fantatic activities for kids.  Below Sweet Pea was sticking transparent pegs into a light board to make them glow.




Sweet Pea is looking in a little cut away "mouse hole" in the wall that had little pretend mice in it.



There was an entire "pretend" town filled with a life size library, vet's office, bank, utility company, pizza shop, auto repair store.  It was like a child's wonderland.

Sweet Pea served us ice cream from an ice cream cart.




There was a pond with real water and magnetic fishing poles so the kids could "catch" magnetic fish.



Sweet Pea cooked and served us pizza at the pizza parlor.



There was a hospital nursery filled with "newborn" dolls and lots of ways to care for them.  Below Sweet Pea is taking care of one of the babies.



Later, we saw a Lewis and Clark exhibit.  Just as we were about to enter one section of it, a museum guide yelled after us, "There are tunnels and slides."  We swung over pits, crawled through tunnels, went over rope bridges and went down slides.  It was quite an adventure.



On our way out, we stopped to take this picture of the entrance.

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Location:Day 2: St. Louis - Part 1

Day 1: Kansas City to St. Louis

Mimi showed up at my house about noon and we loaded her car with luggage and then headed out to pick up Sweet Pea from camp.  We had intended to leave straight away after picking Sweet Pea up, but on the way discovered I had forgotten my Kindle.  We had to go back for it and a dog bowl and to make another bathroom stop...

We did eventually get away for real though.

At a rest stop on I-70, we encountered an "all-in-one" automatic hand washer and dryer.  You just stick your hands in, it squirts soap on you, then sprays water and then dries them with hot air.  It was pretty fun and Sweet Pea really loved it.




Of course, we were soon hungry so for snacks we had some delicious Parmesan crisps and little grape tomatoes.




I introduced Sweet Pea to the art of pot holder weaving, which she loved.  Mimi and I both had fond memories of weaving them when we were little, although Mimi remembered using a metal loom.



We were almost to our Drury Inn, but there was a stalled car in the center lane of the highway that slowed us down for the last few miles.  We were anxious to make it to the Drury's Kickback, which is free "dinner" served between 5:30pm and 7:00pm.  We arrived at 6:55, but soon wished we had missed it altogether.  Below, you can see the "tasty" nacho spread that we left mostly untouched after only a few bites.



Luckily, there was also free popcorn.




Tomorrow we are headed to The Magic House.

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