Writer's Block of Adventure

December 2, 2009 to December 5, 2009

The Photos

Getting out of Dallas was quite difficult and now the blog writing has become arduous as well.  Part of that is waiting on Gregory to start typing, but as you can see he is much more interested in posting lots of ancillary things to the blog rather than details!  So here goes...

Back on the Road!

Our last post (no, not the one about Hell freezing over, the one with actual details!) was written during a non continental breakfast at the Candlelight Inn of Savanna, OK.  We stopped there around 9pm or 10pm because we were too tired to drive any farther (getting out of Dallas really took it out of us!)  When we arrived, the owner/manager was decorating the Christmas tree with lights.  And I don't mean just kinda haphazardly strewing them about, I mean really wrapping every limb (even the center post was wrapped in lights!)  And it is a tradition of theirs to have people guess the number of lights used in the tree.  Gregory has entered in the magic number of 3,100.  Everyone keep your fingers crossed that he wins the prize (whatever it may happen to be!)

Getting on the road in the morning was a little harder than should have been, partially from typing up the post and partially because my family expected us to be on the road sooner.  Hating to have our actions dictated but realizing we still had quite a distance to go, we packed up our gear and hit the road about 11am.  Driving a U-Haul makes for some back breaking, mind numbing times.  Heading North as the days get shorter multiplies that effect.  Having it start to snow on you intensifies it even more.  However, without incident and only really stopping for gas, we made it to Hamel, IL and my uncle's house.  We quickly unload the heavy furniture and stop to break cornbread, eat chili and talk with my aunt and uncle before hitting the road.  Gregory learns more about religion than he thought he wanted to know and I learn that the baptists are not the only fractured religion out there, we are just one of the most prevalent.

Quest Completed, Earn Gold
and Experience Points!

Then it is on to Anji and Oniero's house in St Louis, minus the Oniero as he is still studying to be a helicopter pilot, where we will spend a couple of nights and see the City Museum.  Our original plan was to go to the City Museum on Thursday, but in returning the U-Haul, walking through Tower Grove Park and eventually landing at the City Diner we had fairly wasted half of our day and calling the City Museum we discovered they were on shorter hours during the week anyway.  So regroup, change of plans and spend the rest of the day, lazing at Anji's (but NOT writing Blog posts which might have been the smart thing to do.)  We ate dinner at Everest Cafe & Bar, where we discovered that we do not like Mango Achar, we do not like it Sam We Are, but I cleaned that portion of my plate in the spirit of adventure and trying to find the good (or at least non poisonous) in the food set in front of me.  Mango Achar is basically pickled Mango and other Veggies and when I say pickled, I'm not talking sweetly bread and buttered, I'm talking full out salt and vinegar pickled pieces of indeterminate origin.  But yeah I cleaned that portion of my plate and didn't even get a gold star.  The rest of the food was really yum, but it is hard not to get stuck on the thing that makes the biggest impression.

Anji Holding Our Place, While We Marvel at the Menu!

After dinner, I'm feeling the pull of ice cream as I've noticed some green tea ice cream on the menu.  However, once I mention dessert of the frozen cream variety, Anji sparks us with the thought of frozen custard from Ted Drewes.  So to Ted Drewes we go, only to realize that it is the happening joint in St. Louis on a frozen December night (ok so it wasn't frozen yet, but I get the feeling that the increasing cold does not keep the citizens of St. Louis away from their Ted Drewes!)  Gregory ordered the All Shook Up (if you couldn't guess from the name or spend the research time on the website provided) a banana and Reese's Peanut Butter Cup creation that would make the King proud.  I ordered the Sin Sunday (although I think they've changed the name from the website to the stand) a tart cherry, hot fudge creation that would make a preacher's wife blush, but not stop eating.  And Anji ordered a creation of her own devising that started like mine, but then got nutty with some pistachios.  And that is just focusing on the yum, not on the 10 to 15 minute wait in the cold to order it *I've been instructed to interject that although we did not have an actual thermometer to check on, it was pretty fuckin'n cold!  It was crazy busy!

More blog to come... exploration of the City Museum, a short bus ride to Columbia, MO and the fun we had there and a much longer bus ride to Denver where we sit at the moment.