2015-8-31---kids'  old house

Angie texted and said their house from when they lived in Ferguson was going up on the auction block starting at $35,000!  To the unknowing, that's probably status quo for a house in Ferguson since the riots and continued unrest, but we know that it had burnt down about 7 years ago and she used her K-State architecture schooling to rebuild it with a lot of top of the line stuff!  We were shocked to hear it was going to auction.  I was tempted to go to the auction, but was afraid I might buy it.  We already have 2 houses in north county and an apartment in Florida.  But I still can't imagine this going for $35,000---complete with finished basement. 

Still looked amazing!  I heard later that it didn't go to auction.  I guess the homeowner finally paid their bill.

2015-8-30---St. Louis Zoo


When we lived here full time, I always thought about going to the zoo or Arch or butterfly garden, or many other places, but it would be decades between trips to most.  So as a tourist, I went to as many as I could fit in.  First to the Botanical Gardens, then to the zoo.  I've always been impressed with our zoo and everytime I go they've added more to it.  It is quite large and beautifully landscaped.  The newest thing there now is the Polar bear enclosure.

 some of the many flowers in the zoo.

 viewing into the pond in the rhino area.

 another baby elephant at the St. Louis zoo.  Raja, the first one born here now has 4 or 5 calves.

 a little climatron butterfly house is relatively new here, too.

 the penguin house---felt really good in there since the weather in St. Louis turned really hot the 2nd week we were there! 

 puffins

 Don't know where they got the boxes from, but 2 of the gorillas were wandering around with boxes that said Latex gloves on them.  I only know that's what the box said because I zoomed into it with my 200 zoom lens.  Wonder if anything was in the boxes?  The day after I was there one of the gorillas died.  Supposedly of a heart condition. 

 a lesser antelope

 a wanna be giraffe and a real one.

a smart lion.

one of the big cats

 more of the beautiful flowers landscaping the zoo. 

Like I mentioned, it got hot!  Temps in the mid 90s with heat indexes well over 100.  People are always commenting isn't it hot in South Florida.  I always say never as bad as the days like we have in St. Louis when they have heat waves---and there usually are some in July and August in St. Louis.  Maybe it's because S. Florida gets almost nightly thunderstorms and lots of clouds to cool it down and St. Louis doesn't.

2015-8-28 and 29  visiting with friends and family

The next few days we caught up with friends and family---dinner with the Schneiderjans-twice; breakfast with Josh's folks; dinner with FAith's Dad and fiance; lunch with friends from swimming; dinner with friends from volleyball; Ken saw friends he use to work with; dinner at his sister-in-law's and brother's restaurant (Stefanina's--great as always); lunch with some friends from Illinois from my childhood; and a couple more visits with my brother and sister-in-law.  Took my brother and sister-in-law to a park we use to ride bikes at--Confluence park where the Missouri and the Mississippi meet--and wandered around a bit.

 meeting of the rivers.

I even went bowling with a friend.  We were doing pretty good until they shut the lights off and a bunch of little kids came in and started running wild all over the lanes.  We packed it up and headed to lunch then.

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2015-8-25---Missouri Botanical Gardens 


Day 1- I met up with a photography friend and she and I went to the Missouri Botanical Gardens and shot pictures of everything.  They were still set up for the Chinese Lanterns exhibit, so we got to see it by daylight.  This is made up of bottles of different colored water.

 found some more butterflies--Monarch, I believe.

 and lush beautiful plants.

 even found the reflections in the Japanese Garden pond interesting.

 colorful dragonfly

 More of the Japanese Garden.

 zig zag bridge in the Japanese Garden

 in the Italian Garden.

 The St. Louis symbol Flore de li made up of tiny plants.

 Karen getting a macro shot in the patchwork garden.

 more of the Chinese lantern decorations.  They light up at night.

 more Chinese Lantern lights.

 and, yes, more.

 close up of a hybiscus flower.

 cone flower

 bee checking out the garden, too.

 flowers with the Linean House in the back ground.

 some of the many roses.

 some of the many Chinese Lanterns.

 lastly, a water lily.  We spent 5 hours there catching up and exploring.  It was a fun time.

I do miss our Missouri Botanical Gardens!  It is impressive.  But so are the reciprocal gardens we find around the country!

2015-8-24---on to St. Louis

 

Next day both "kids" took off to work---first day for Faith at her new job.  So we jumped in the car and continued our trip to St. Louis.  This portion was about 550 miles.  Got to drive through more mountains.

  Another thing I like to take pictures of while we're riding along is old barns.  Certainly have a lot of them in the midwest.

Usually we take the northern route from Knoxville to St. Louis.  But it's suppose to be quicker going through Nashville.  So we decided to go that way this time.  We were making great time---no delays at all in Nashville---then came across the first of the truck accidents in our way.  This one had happened about 5 hours earlier and had a fatality, but traffic was slowly getting by here.

 Shortly after we got past that wreck, we saw smoke in the distance.  We tried to get a radio update or internet update from my phone of what was going on, but didn't find it until it was too late.   3 or 4 miles of highway were shut down because of another semi accident.  After sitting in the car so long, I decided to walk down with the hordes of other people to see what was going on.

 2 hours later and still a lot of work to do to get things going.  So when I got back to the car, we did what most of the other cars did and drove across the median to the other side and took the detour around.

Made for an already long trip even longer.  We did stop about 100 miles from St. Louis and had dinner and visited with my brother and sister-in-law in southern Illinois.  We ended up leaving there around 10 pm.  
Got into St. Louis after 11pm.  Assessed the house.  We had the ac shut off (later I was reminded the ac doesn't work---we had to have Freon added to it the last 2 summers, but we didn't need it our first week so we didn't bother have more added for 1 week).  Apparently our family room floors didn't like not having ac and buckled pretty badly.  I figure they'll go back down in the winter, but for now we walked up and down mountains in the family room.
Now was the start of a busy 2 weeks in St. Louis.

2015-8-23---riding around West Knoxville

 Next day we drove around a bit looking at locations they hope to buy a house in when their lease is up.  Now that both of them have good jobs and their house in St. Louis sold, they can't wait to buy a home.  Along the way, we stopped at another park.  This one actually had people swimming in the lake.  I put my foot in the water and was surprised to find it wasn't cold.

 Tim even became the Pied Piper of ducks.

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2015-8-22---Knoxville 

  They took us to Tupelo Honey Cafe for breakfast the next day.  Here Faith's enjoying a Bloody Mary while I enjoyed a Mimosa.  Our meals were excellent, too! 

 The mall downtown turns into a marketplace on Sat.s, so we wandered around the mall a bit.

 Some of the many local items.

 There are even performers there.

 Tim and Faith heading down the marketplace with the Federal courthouse Tim works at in the distance.

 Tomato jam!

 A look back at Tupelo Honey Cafe on our way back through the "mall".

 The World's Fair was held in Knoxville in 1982 so we walked to the area where most of it took place.  The Sunsphere was the symbol of the fair.  After the fair, it closed to the public.  It was used for short periods of time until 2005 when it was scheduled for renovation.  The 4th level is the observation floor, 5th level is a restaurant, and other levels are businesses.  Best of all, it's free!

 View towards downtown from the observation floor.

From there we walked towards the Worlds Fair park passing another water feature along the way.

 and a Chocolate store, but for $15/lb, I passed on buying any.

 Another city sign.

Now it was time to find a little nature.  So many parks to check out around Knoxville!!!  This time we went to Ijams Park and hiked around a bit.  

 even saw some snakes

 love all the wild flowers growing throughout the park

 down to the Tennessee River.

 House with quite a view.

 more wild flowers

 walkway along the river

male eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly

female eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly missing part of it's tail.

hoping to someday be a butterfly, but these fall webworms will end up as moths.  I believe the big webs we saw all over the trees along the highway were webs caused by colonies of webworms.

Back at Tim and Faith's place, I even saw more colorful wildlife in their back yard.  They even have hummingbirds, but I never was able get a good picture of any of them.

 That night we headed back to Gatlinburg to dinner at a brewery on our way up to Clingman's Dome for sunset.  Had a good laugh at this mobile home!

 Dinner was great, as was the company.

 Sunset, though, was not so great.  It clouded over by the time we got up there.

 Coming back down we did see this bear, but I had my settings all wrong on my camera.  He didn't stick around for me to correct them.

 Back in Gatlinburg we got a kick out of this boat/car.

It was a funfilled day!