St. Louis Sojourn

We arrived in St. Louis pretty whupped from the flights from France but glad to be there. We got to the airport about midnight and had the great pleasure of seeing Clara there – we hadn’t expected that! The next day was a kind of hanging around day, taking a nap, just relaxing and catching up. 

When we came through St. Louis on the way to France in July, Craig and Annie’s furniture and household stuff arrived the morning after we arrived, so the house was, in a word, disorganized. This time, of course, it was a real home, with everything in place. We can tell you that it is a really nice house, in an excellent neighborhood, with lots to do and see. We will definitely explore more on future visits and we’re looking forward to doing that. 

This trip, we relaxed and got back in United States mode and we also saw some very interesting and cool things: a fabulous botanical garden, and the National Transportation Museum and a park with contemporary sculptures

First though, the most important thing: pictures of Clara and Henry!

Clara (on the right) and her best friend Caleigh in their Halloween costumes, as plague doctors. Lookin’ good, eh?

Henry (age 6) getting ready for a bike ride.

Henry and Grandma on the bike ride. Not sure this is how it’s supposed to work.

Clara (11) with her blue-green hair.

Missouri Botanical Gardens

This botanical garden is not more than ten or twelve minutes from Craig and Annie’s house and it is beautiful. We spent a couple hours here and could have spent more. It has a wonderful tropical building, a beautiful Japanese Garden, a children’s garden and much more. 

You can see that we had a beautiful day to visit the botanical garden. I think it was high-70s that day.

I’d commit a crime to get a load of beautiful rocks like these in the Japanese garden of the Botanical Gardens.

Seattle artist Dale Chihuly had these glass creations in a pond in the tropical greenhouse. Don’t they look like an exotic bird?

Nice way to spend a late-October warm day, eh?

National Transportation Museum

Although this is the National Transportation Museum, the transportation is heavily oriented toward rail-based modes. There are many locomotives, of all ages, freight cars, passenger cars, trams and trolleys and streetcars. Then there are maybe 25 automobiles, one boat and one airplane. Since I bored you with the post on the Cité de la Train (Mulhouse) in France, I won’t bore you with lots of pictures from here. Maybe a few…

Big Boy 

This locomotive has fascinated me since I first saw one on display in Cheyenne, Wyoming, home of the Union Pacific. The Union Pacific built twenty-five “Big Boy” locomotives between 1942 and 1945; they are the biggest locomotives ever, 132 ft long and weighing 1.2 million pounds.  

“Big Boy” – aptly named, I’d say.

I’ve always wondered what the view was from the engineer’s seat. Visitors could climb into Big Boy’s cab to see what what the engineer saw: not much!

Want an idea of how big this locomotive is? Look at the very end of it, on the right side of the picture. That’s me waving out the fireman’s window.

Craig and Laurie in front of Big Boy’s driving wheels. There are 32 of those wheels!

Thought to be the oldest surviving locomotive in the United States.

This is a streetcar from the San Francisco Muni Railroad. I remember seeing these going up and down Market Street. I probably rode on one sometime.

For someone who enjoys old trains, this place is heaven – lots of interesting equipment around, some of it restored, much of it not. There seemed to be no restrictions as to where we could go, so we walked all over it. Lots of fun.

We also visited a park with many outdoor sculptures of the modern type, and a great city park, with playgrounds, walks, a huge swimming complex, an ice-skating rink and a bunch of other stuff. 

You can tell we like St. Louis! We’ll be back for Christmas, when it’s likely the weather will not be so amenable to getting out. But we’ll try!

Wrapping It Up

After a week of great times here, we headed for the airport. Gotta say that the St. Louis airport is becoming a favorite; it’s small, well-organized and not all that busy. Almost makes flying fun again.

We returned to Seattle on October 25, three months to the day after we had left there. As always, we were sad to leave France, sad to leave Craig and Annie and Clara and Henry, and glad to be back home. We’re already planning and looking forward to future travels – as a great friend says, “Making memories.” Thanks to all of you for joining us on our travels via this blog. For now…wrapping it up.