We visited St. Louis for the last 2 days. Friday, Jim Grove and his wife, Dudley, gave us a tour of neat things like the “New Cathedral” with spectacular mosaics covering the entire interior of the church, the Missouri Botanical Gardens, beautiful private development homes from around 1900, the Campbell House (a complete time capsule of home and furnishings from around 1870) and the Missouri Contemporary Art Museum, where their daughter is the Director of Operations, and the big downtown St. Louis Park. The best part about it was having Dudley as a tour guide because she’s a veritable walking encyclopedia of information about many things concerning St. Louis and she seems to know everybody in many of these institutions. Also Jim is a Hatteras owner and cruiser and has many interesting stories about cruising. They keep their Hatt in Ft Lauderdale and go to the Bahamas frequently. This summer they cruised it up to their place in Nova Scotia. So it was lots of fun.

On Saturday, our son, Mike, drove down from Chicago to stay for a couple days. We saw the Arch, of course and rode the teeny tube shaped elevator cars up to the top (that’s the crowd at the top of the Arch). It’s bigger and more imposing than I expected. We also saw the Melvin Price lock and dam where they have a barge driving exhibit with a full size barge pilothouse and 3 windows with big TV screens to use for a barge operator simulator. I hit the lock wall L Then on Sunday we drove up to the wine country and saw a couple wineries. The Stone Hill Winery was excellent with a complete tour and wine tasting. My tastes don’t run towards Missouri wine though, but still fun.