After Richie went to work, we headed over to the St. Louis zoo. This zoo is free, It’s very very large and very well done. We were lucky that the rain held off and we had a good morning. The animals were slow to come out as the workers were cleaning up debris from the storm the night before. If you’re ever in St. Louis, I highly recommend this is Sue and you can park on the street which is free rather than the parking lot for $15.
Rain was in the forecast so we did not plan any excursions in the city, and then, of course it never really rent that hard. We managed to plant some monkey grass and black-eyed Susans that we had brought up Richie and Scotty worked on the sump pumps electrical work. We had bratwurst for lunch and cake later when some of Richie ‘s friends came over. We also played Catan and watch some TV. Even Opie was involved today as he got two walks in the backpack.
We got to Richie‘s house in the afternoon and headed over to the expo center for a curiosities and oddities show. It was definitely curious and odd and we thoroughly enjoyed it. They were all kinds of creepy, bizarre, strange exhibits. Some of the more popular items were stuffed animals dressed up in Victorian clothing, and they were selling for quite a high price. There were even some deer with their stomachs, hollowed out and dioramas inside.what really amaze me was the sheer number of booths and the number of people that were there at the show. Who knew there was such a market for oddities.
From there we drove over to earth found brewery in the Cherokee section of St. Louis. We did the 4 o’clock tour, which is very interesting as this brewery had all their equipment down in the cellar. Apparently underneath St. Louis, there are a lot of caves and many businesses have underground cellars and these three owners seem quite motivated in their renovating. They hired people from the neighborhood to help dig out all of the dirt. The tour guide was even a neighbor (a masseuse) who really likes the brewery’s mission and leads tours. After the tour we each had a beer and they were very good. We walked across the street to Yaquis Pizza and had two really good pizzas as we sat out on the patio.
Today we put our boats in at the Grayton Beach boat ramp. There are about five parking spots there and see concrete ramp down into the water – a very easy put in. We paddled out into the lake around the grasses, and then we paddle back into the same direction, and headed out towards the golf here. The water is very shallow, botanic color, surrounded by white dunes and grasses and it’s a very easy paddle with beautiful scenery all around on one side of the lake or some big beautiful beach homes east another side parallels the shore, and on the other side of the lake, we could see the Grayton Beach Park trails. Here we paddled a total of 3 miles under bright blue skies and I 70° weather. It was beautiful.
We drove to Myron Hodge city Park Campground, which is very close. This is a small but nice park and they are even 20 RV sites with full hook ups. There’s a beautiful long dock that goes out over the water. We launched turbos into the river, and it was a pretty paddle. At the beginning. We passed by some flowering trees, and again it was the brown Tanic water. After a while we realized that we were going against the wind, and there was not much current, and there were still quite a ways to get to the king, we looked at our phones and were able to figure out the aqua Connie trail was nearby. So we ventured off into the marsh among the tall grasses to navigate back to the campground. We did have to stop a few times as they were new stop signs, street signs or directional arrows , it was very interesting and kind of fun, but not an easy paddle. Even before we got into that trail, a boat stopped to talk with us. I think he was surprised that we were out there we made it to the campground paddling a total of 9 miles . Scotty then rode his bike back to get the truck.
Today we drove west over to the golf and spent the day at Fred Howard Park. This is a man-made island just off the coast of Tampa in the golf. There are 155 acres and there’s even a kayak trail here we weren’t able to Kai EXO as the tide was low. Apparently you’re able to kayak through the marshes under the mangroves and out into the gulf. We did have a really enjoyable day sitting and watching the beach happenings. It was really fun watching the kite surfers, and we were just amazed at their ability to go back-and-forth and even to get the kite up, the girls were quite aggressive here and we watched as it went after snacks in some peoples bags when they left their chairs. Scotty even observed some goals opening a Chick-fil-A bag (again when people left their chairs empty) and the gulls ate all their chick fillet nuggets. We moved to the north side of the island where it was calmer so that I could log into my photography class for the beautiful classroom setting. The temperature this day was in the low 70s beautiful beach day and Scotty was able to snorkel some while I was in class.
