July 2: Raining, raining, raining

Tuesday:  Today we woke up to rain, we drove to rain, and we visited the Gateway Arch in the rain!  Other than the Gateway Arch, all we did was drive!  The Gateway Arch was fun.  Neither Randy or I have ever visited it, so it was fun to see and go up inside to the top on little trams.  Yesterday, we traveled through Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennesee, Arkansas, and part of Missouri.  Today, Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota to get home around 10:30 at night.  I had to go out and look at my garden with the flashlight--I know kind of crazy and obsessive!  The plants all exploded!!  Wow, they got a lot of rain here!  The weather is fantastic, cool and low humidity!!  This is the summer weather we all dream of!!

This is our pod for five that we sat in to ride up in the arch to the top.  Very cozy!

Here we are inside!

At the very top!

Views from the tiny windows:

The river

The ball park

An important building in green space

Now for just some weird perspectives of the arch:

This is of the arch from one of the windows in the top--very tricky!

Wednesday Update:  Running errands today, we saw so many trees in our neighborhood (even on all of the blocks around us, down and uprooted--mature trees!  And piles of branches everwhere!  Wow, that storm was a monster.  Every block but ours in our entire neighborhood seemed to have major tree damage.  Knowing that we lost power for several days, last night we immediately threw out some meat from the freezer and some cream cheese and salad dressings from the refrigerator.  No mold, funky smells, or anything other surprises were awaiting us, thank goodness.   Simba, our kitty, was already here.  He spent much of the night wanting to be near us but a bit aloof.  Today is better.  I took Anneliese to the doctor this morning, swimmers ear, but he couldn't see the inner ear to decide if that was infected as well.  Strong antibiotics, ear drops, and up to 4 advil if she needs to for pain.  We have a much happier girl working hard on her health homework.  And the weather is sunny, low humidity, and absolutely perfect!  A perfect summer day!  Soon I need to go out with a machete to attack the gardens.  

traveling, traveling, traveling

Today we began our two days to get back home.  No photos, because it was pretty boring!  All we saw were rest areas, gas stations, McDonalds, and our hotel about an hour south of St. Louis.  We also stopped at a Walgreens to buy Advil for Anneliese.  She isn't any better (she's miserable), despite taking Sudafed, Advil, and Allegra, and using warm compresses.  We will get back late tomorrow, so Wednesday morning I will need to call the pediatrician's office for a same-day appointment.  :(    Poor girl.

We will see the St. Louis arch tomorrow, hopefully go up in it if time allows (we have another 10 hour driving day ahead of us).  Then home sweet home where our kitty will be waiting for us (the cat sitter is dropping him off during the day).  We were assured by neighbors that we contacted that our house was not crushed by a fallen tree in the storm that hit south Minneapolis, so all should be well.