An Iowa Garden

In addition to seeing the Chihuly glass at the Missouri Botanical Garden, we also walked around the gardens themselves; though it was October, lots of things were still in bloom, though signs of fall were everywhere, with the mums in full bloom, and bright mauve colchicums popping up, contrasting with the deep puples of the toad lilies. There are lots of other interesting things to see, including many garden sculptures, a few of which are shown here. That afternoon, we toured the St. Louis Zoo; the penguin house was my favorite... though I always wonder if penguins don't get tired of the smell of fish.
It was late at night when we finally got back to our motel room and got ready to go out for supper, but we were bent on going down by the riverfront to Laclede's Landing. Unfortunately it was easier said then done... mind you, we got very close to it. Our map showed that it would be a little tricky, but the reality was that on a dark night, it was VERY tricky; we kept coming to streets that were closed off, for inexplicable reasons. It finally looked like our best bet was to go to the north end of Laclede's, and take a right; as we rounded a curve, heavy traffic was merging from the left, and too late I saw that I should have taken a harder right... the next thing I knew we were on the bridge over the Mississippi to Illinois. Getting off on the first exit over the river, we drove north to the first place with lights so we could look at our map; it was a nightclub looking like the one in the movie Roadhouse. Unfortunately our map was just for St. Louis; in the bottom of the glove compartment was an ancient Illinois map that showed that it should be just as easy to keep going north and take the next bridge upriver back to St. Louis. However, when we got there the bridge had been closed; how many years it had been closed, I don't know, as we couldn't see anything in the murky dark, but the sign was all weathered and beaten up. There we were, in the middle of East St. Louis late at night, with no functional map, not having eaten for ten hours. I think Liz hates it when I'm cheerful under these circumstances. We then decided (actually I decided, as I think about that time Liz stopped talking to me), that we'd give up Laclede's Landing, keep going up to the next bridge, which was the interstate, and take a big loop back to our motel. We finally got back, two hours after we left, ordered a delivery pizza, and called it a night... another successful Bright Family tour.