Day 11 - Swimming Through St. Louis

The day got off to a slow start since I only had four hours of driving to get across Missouri to St. Louis. Of course I did want to see some of the city in the evening so I didn't lallygag too much.

In St. Louis, I was staying at Babler State Park, which was about 45 min out of downtown. It was little tricky to find the place since there weren't really any road signs, but I managed. When I stepped out of my car to set up up camp, I felt like I was swimming through the air. It was so muggy! Oh how I miss the perfect weather in San Fran.

After my tent was up, I went downtown to explore. I wandered around the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (aka where the Arch is), took some pictures and walked through the museum there about how the west was opened up. It was interesting, especially considering that I had just seen a good portion of the country it was talking about.

After the memorial, I walked up the mall taking pictures of interesting buildings or just good shots given that the light was starting to fail. I also stopped by Busch Stadium, but alas, it was quiet. If there was a game playing, you know I'd have been in there, but there was no way to see a Cards game with my schedule.

I ended up having dinner in the restaurant district of downtown at a nice french restaurant. There was a restaurant week promotion going on where a lot of downtown restaurants were offering a prix fixe menu for a very reasonable price so I took advantage of it. I had the walnut grape salad, flank steak served over mashed potatoes with a red wine reduction sauce and a glass of Rosenblum Shiraz. Desert was a slice of decadent chocolate cake.

Now that I was full and it was dark, I got in the car to head back to the campsite. On the way, I realized that I hadn't been paying attention to my gas gauge when the alarm went off. Of course, not knowing where the next gas station would be off the freeway, I started freaking. Air conditioning off. Slow down to 55. Limp along hoping that I'd find some gas soon. Fortunately, it wasn't too far away so I was able to get there, but I was almost running on fumes.

When I got back to the site, I was greeted by a cacophony of sounds from the forest. It was mostly insets and they were loud! Normally you except a few peeps from the odd cricket, but here, in the muggy midwest, it was deafening.