Last Stop

It's hard to believe it, but we've actually made it to the last stop on this far more than seven thousand mile adventure.  We're in St. Louis, Missouri, which we will explore tomorrow before heading home at last on Wednesday morning. It's somewhat fitting to end our journey here. I saw sights visited by Lewis and Clark, saw landmarks from the Louisiana Purchase and the Oregon Trail.  I saw the grandest sights in the West, and here I am, making my way home from the Gateway to the West.  Maybe a little backwards, but still, fitting.

The adventure is not quite over...we still have the City Museum and some cadavers on our schedule before we drive the 12 hours home.

Before we get too reflective, let's talk about what we've been up to.  We had a nice visit with relatives/friends in Tulsa, for the two hours that we were both there and awake, before heading to visit the Ozark Medieval Fortress, a 14th century-style castle being built in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas.  It has a lot of promise, but the staff was a little absent because of it being a Sunday. I did get bitten by a horse for the first time, but we decided we needed to come back in about five years.

Then it was time to head down to Little Rock to visit my sis-in-law.  She made us a delicious dinner of chicken and dumplings, and then today we visited the Little Rock that the city is named after.  We also paid a visit to the Historical Arkansas Museum (HAM), which is a reconstruction/preservation of a block of LR from the 1820s-40s. It was pretty neat, and the museum itself was great. There was an exhibit comparing the Civil War/Old South as shown in Gone With the Wind (movie) and actual history in Arkansas. There was more on the making of GWTW than film analysis, but since I've been re-reading the novel on this trip, it was especially interesting. After lunch, it was time to hit the road again to St. Louis.

Here in St. Louis, we went straight to the Schlafly Bottleworks, an awesome brew-pub that I visited when I was here in the spring.  They have a lot of great local food, and of course, awesome beer.  We shared the goat cheese dip, which was amazing, and I had a beer cheese soup which was almost as delicious.  Now, here we are, blogging and catching up on internet stuff.