Meet Me in St. Louis...Louis..

Greetings from St. Louis. I was here with my friend Desi taking part in an Army Family Programs Academy conference. We drove here in a pretty fun rental car -- a Pontiac G6. On our way, we stopped in Hannibal for lunch at the Mark Twain Dinette. While there, we stopped at the Native American Trading Company so that Desi could peruse the goods as she is one half Cherokee. She purchased a really cool Beaver claw necklace.

We continued on our way until we got to St. Louis where we went to a reception for Army people that evening. We met some really nice and funny girls from a tiny town in West Virginia. This was their first trip out of their town of Clay, WV and their first trip on an airplane. They were pretty funny to listen to as they told their travel stories.

Saturday found us in conference sessions all day, but I entertained myself with some typing on the new laptop and some checking of email, etc. Once done, we escaped out into the scorching heat and humidity of St. Louis to explore the area around our hotel. We were in the Hilton by the Ballpark, so we had a view of the new Busch Stadium from our hotel window. We agreed it looks pretty darn good from the air conditioned room. But...we went out anyway. We were near a park that has a whole mess of mini Arches. From there, we had a picturesque view of the real Arch and some big white building (we think it's a museum of sorts but the name escapes me).

While taking some pictures, we were amused by two wedding parties that we saw taking a ton of pictures right where we wanted to take pictures. It was kind of annoying. I remarked how hot it was several times (much to Desi's dismay) and how I would hate to be getting married in this heat. She told me I would never make it as a soldier in the desert, and boy is she right! I can't stand the thought of Ken having to be anywhere where it's as hot or hotter than this. She then called us a couple of old married women and I said it's still weird for me to think of myself as being an old married woman -- probably because I've only been married about 5 months and Ken has been gone for 3 of them.

We wandered around the Arch and then thought we would try to go up it, but we found out that we would have had to wait about an hour and a half to get on the elevators. So instead we wandered around inside the base of it and went into some stores. I bought an Arch magnet and then we played a rousing of checkers in a little mercantile store.

We decided to go lounge in the air conditioned hotel for the rest of the evening. Great minds think alike! There we rested comfortably for our morning sessions the next day. On Sunday, it was back in the car and back to Iowa.