St. Louis Escape

JTC and I had an incredible weekend in St. Louis. It felt soooooo good to get out of town and spend some time together.

We left town on Friday afternoon at around 4 p.m. Arrived in St. Louis at around 9 p.m. Checked in to our $51/night downtown Marriott hotel room without a hitch (normally a $300 / night room... Thank you Hotwire!)

The view from our room was spectacular.

By 9 a.m. on Saturday, we were at the St. Louis Zoo. It is incredible. If you've never been there before, I highly recommend it. It was named the number one zoo in the country by Zagat... and it is FREE. We spent the entire day there... literally. Didn't leave the place until 3:30 or so. Click here for BB's personal tour of the zoo.

After the Zoo, we came back to the room, freshened up, changed clothes and then headed over to an area called "The Loop." It is basically a hip, collegy place with cool shops, clubs and restaurants.

Then we went down to the riverfront to a blues fest at Laclede's Landing. It was packed with people and four stages of music. Very fun.

Sleep definitely came easy to both of us Saturday night.

Sunday, before we checked out of our awsome hotel, we walked down to the arch. Click here for a photo pictorial. It was incredible.

Then, we checked out and drove a few blocks to Union Station. It's basically the old train station turned into a little eclectic mall with little shops and restaurants.

Before we left town, we decided to make one more trip to "The Loop" because it was just so cool. We ate at Ciceros and then tempted ourselves at two really cool furniture stores: Intaglia and Good Works. (We wanted to buy everything at both of these places... Lynn & Emily... you'd have loved the stuff here.)

After window shopping for awhile, we decided to head back home to Nashville. We made it back by 6:30 or so.

It was a GREAT weekend.

A Zoo-riffic Day!

Below I've created a tour of the St. Louis Zoo using a small sample of the 257 photos I took during our zoo adventure on Saturday.


The new penquin exhibit is amazing. If we'd have been willing to break the rules, we could've actually touched them. The four in the photo to the right are actually standing like this... it is not a mirror. I couldn't believe it. They were standing like little penquin soldiers.


And, see the brown fuzzy one in this photo, that is a baby penguin. The small penquin behind him is his Mom. The keeper said it would be another two months before the baby lost it's fur an looked normal. It was huge compared to its mom but its mom was constantly there to protect it.


Right past the penguins was the puffin exhibit. There were tons of them and some of them looked like Jack Nicolsen. They were hilarious.


Next came the polar bear. (Love them!) The first time we walked by he was asleep.


When we came back, he was wide awake and adorable. I know they aren't really cuddly (I've seen the "polar bear attacks" video on TV), but they seem so cuddly. Love the black pads of their feet and their inquisitive (mmmm... you look like you'd be tasty) look.


The grizzlies were napping and chilling out, too. It's hard to see in this photo (right), but there is another grizzly napping behind the one standing up. They are HUGE and their claws scare me.

Flamingos, gazelles and various other grazing animals were next on the path. I can't remember all the names without the help of my personal docent (JTC)... But you get the idea!










I'm sure you recognize most of them: camels, zebras, leapords, tigers, tortoises and lions... Lions, tigers and bears, OH MY! **wink**


The St. Louis Zoo also has two pregnant Asian elephants. When we walked through the elephant area, one of their keepers was giving a talk. Chet knew everything there was to know about the day-to-day life of a St. Louis Zoo elephant. It was fascinating.


And, even before we walked up to the elephant area we could hear spashing and bellaring... as we rounded the corner we could see one of the elephants taking a bath and cooling off. It was right there in front of us.

Amazing.


At the end of our adventure, we wandered into / through the insectarium. There were tons of cool creepy crawly things... and then at the end was a butterfly exhibit.

Walking through it was like walking into a fairytale. Butterflies were chasing each other around and flying all over the place.

It was amazing... if only the battery of my camera hadn't finally given out you'd see many more photos than this!


At around 3:30, we'd finally made it through the entire zoo. So, we made our obligatory stop at the gift shop to purchase arm bands that said "Animals Always" for only $1. (I think the Nashville Zoo should do something like this as a fundraiser... I'm sure they're cheap to get and everyone could afford to buy one, too. Awareness for the zoo AND money to feed the animals! Cool idea.)


These two animals had a GREAT time at the St. Louis Zoo... I only wish I could show you more!

Visiting the Gateway to the West

While we didn't pay to go to the top of the Gateway Arch, we did spend a good amount of time walking around it.

It was quite an experience.


From a distance, it looks a little frail and tenuous.


Until you are right up next to it, it is impossible to realize its mass.


We didn't go up to look out the windows of the arch, but I can imagine that you can see quite a ways from the microscopic looking viewing ports. From the ground they look like they were made for ants... but I'm sure they are much larger than they appear.


While we were there, Duke University's soccer team was warming up on the stairs. How cool is that? I got the coach's e-mail and am sending him copies of these pics. Who knows?! Maybe my photos will make the newsletter! HA.


Across the river from the memorial, there are a couple riverboat casinos and... da dah da daaaah... a Cargil plant. Took this pic just for Tom, John's brother, who works at Cargil in Eddyville, IA.


This was really the only way to get a photo of us with the arch in the background. I literally had to lay on the ground to get the shot of JTC and the arch.

Wild.

Atlanta St. Louis... Here we come!

OK... so JTC is off for the holiday weekend. No gigs plus we both have Monday off, too. So we thought we'd take a trip to Hot-lanta. Since we moved to Nashvegas almost 5 years ago, we've only traveled through Atlanta on the way to / from other places. So, we thought it would be cool to take a little adventure to see the zoo, catch Randall Bramlett / King Johnson at the jazz festival and take in the city.

Well, yesterday we scrapped that idea when a friend of ours who is actually in Atlanta right now advised against it. He let us know that there is definitely a gas shortage and that the hotels were filling up with displaced Mississippi residents. It probably wouldn't be the best weekend to explore Atlanta and there was a strong possibility that we'd pay $6 / gallon for gas... if we could find some.

SO... we've shifted gears and have decided to go to St. Louis instead.

We're taking off after I get off work today.
**fingers crossed**
I'm hoping I'll get to leave work early today. If so, we may get into St. Louis in time to catch some good music and/or a movie or something.

Got a great rate at the downtown Marriott on Hotwire.com. We're going to the zoo for the entire day tomorrow. Believe it or not, the St. Louis Zoo is free and one of the best zoos in the country. They've got a cool new "Fragile Forest" exhibit that we're excited to see. (PLUS, John is a zoo guru... he can tell you anything and everything about most any animal and most any zoo. It is very fun to go zooing with him.)

If we're not too worn out from the zoo, we'll probably try to find somewhere cool to eat and maybe catch some good music tomorrow night.

Not sure what is on the agenda for Sunday yet... maybe we'll sleep in and do NOTHING at all until it is time to drive back to Nashville. (That sounds like the most fun to me right now.)

If any of you have any other ideas / recommendations about things we can do and/or visit while we're there, let me know.

Appearing TONIGHT...

at the FRENCH QUARTER CAFE:

9 p.m. LaLa Deaton, BB Logan and Jon Nite in the round
AND, JTC, Steve C & JC will be there backing us up... making our songs sound sooooo yummy.

Call your friends!
Let's make it a party.

See you tonight.

Bloglines is broken.

Eventhough I'm extremely annoyed that I can't get to my RSS feeds, I do think Bloglines little message is kinda clever.

Hi,
I'm the Bloglines Plumber. We've had a database crash, and we hope to be right back. Bloglines will be all better when I'm done with it.
Thanks,
The Bloglines Plumber

All cuteness aside, Feed Demon is looking better all the time.

Must bite bullet and switch.