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| Documenting our trip with a selfie at a rest area in Illinois, just before the Missouri border |
Rather than driving straight across the country, only stopping for food and gas, we thought we should take the opportunity to actually visit some places in this great land of ours. And since we weren't traveling with the men in our family who prefer to go, go, go, we did just that. Michelle researched possibilities and decided that
Forest Park in St. Louis would be a great place to visit. It was.
We had narrowed down the list of what to see to two attractions - the zoo and the art museum, and since we had visited the art museum in Atlanta, we decided to start with the zoo. Once inside we realized that it was extremely crowded and we started second-guessing our decision. However, we were there, so we decided to take a quick trip starting with the River's Edge section.
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| We did find some animals. |
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| Photographing the hippopatamuses |
It was a warm day, but there was plenty of shade, and while it would be a great place to visit with children, we decided that we didn't need to spend our limited time exploring everything the zoo had to offer.
So, we said good-bye to the animals and hurried over to the art museum (which was just a block or so away).
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| The front, the back, and the new wing (housing modern art) |
We arrived at the museum 15 minutes before it closed and learned that you can actually see quite a bit of art in 10 minutes! And even take a couple of pictures.
I took this one in honor of
our visit to the original water lily paintings in Paris earlier this year.
Outside there were a few statues to look at as well, and as we walked back to the parking lot, I found two more reminders of Paris or, more correctly, Versailles.
One was a statue of St. Louis (the city St. Louis was named after Louis IX, king of France; Louis XIII started building Versailles) and the other was the view of the beautiful expanse of lawn ending in a fountain. You don't need to travel to Europe to find beauty.
We enjoyed our two-hour layover in St. Louis and I learned that maybe I can get over my anxiety for driving in that city (the freeway system has been greatly improved since our first trip across the country many, many years ago where I missed a left-hand exit and we got lost on the one-way streets down town) and go back for a longer visit some day.
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