EveryTrail - Find the best Hiking in Missouri
Distance - 220 miles
Time - 3 1/2 hours
Tuesday was another beautiful lazy day full of blogging, adding facebook photos, and spending several hours (!) on the phone. I never went through that stereotypical phase of being the young teenage girl hogging the family phone, so I guess I'm just making up for it now? ;) I did get up and out of the house to go explore the Springfield public library, mostly because when I was driving in I had passed a massive sign for "The Library Center". I couldn't actually tell if it was a library or some kind of store named "The Library" but Jerry assured me it was indeed a library, with a good coffee shop to boot. Thus I ended up in the Mudhouse for my morning coffee, checking some email and delighting at the rows and rows of books radiating out from the central atrium that I was staring at out of the window.
I was in a good mood to be near so many books, generally being smiling and chatty as I ordered my coffee and settled into a comfy leather armchair. As I was puttering around on my computer, the man sitting a few tables down packed up and was getting ready to leave and stopped by my chair to hand me a napkin with a little smiley face on it and a note inside wishing me a great day. I know on the one hand being complemented on my looks by a stranger is slightly creepy and objectifying, but I still found it rather sweet and well-intentioned, it made me smile to have my good mood been the cause of someone else deciding that it was going to be a good day for them as well. And, as several people have asked, it did not have his phone number in it!
I took a tour around the library and tested a few armchairs in the reading room, then headed home to talk and walk around the neighborhood a bit. With perfect timing, just as I was finishing my call Juliaette got home from her work trip! We picked up the kids and Jerry, and all headed south to Branson for dinner with some work friends who happened to have a daughter about Jack's age.
On the way I got to ask about the strange overpasses I'd experienced several times now - as you approach, you can go right to enter onto the freeway as you would normally, but instead of going through a traffic light and then waiting at a second to turn left to go the other direction on the freeway, the overpass traffic crosses over itself. So if you're heading north on the right hand side of the street with southbound traffic on your left, now you're out on the bridge over the freeway heading north on the left side of the street with southbound traffic on your right. This enables you to turn left onto the freeway without crossing traffic, and then you are guided back to the normal right side of the street as you get off of the overpass bridge. It's called a "diverging diamond", it's apparently quite the thing in traffic management circles, and although it was navigable as a driver, it was admittedly very odd and confusing the first few times!
On Wednesday I sadly had to say goodbye to Jerry when he went to work, and then to the kids when we dropped them off at pre-school. Juliaette had apparently read my mind and figured out my intention to get Oliver washed before I left town that afternoon, and suggested that we make a morning of it! First we stopped to get lattes at Hebrews Coffee so that we could just sit and relax and talk for a while, one of my favorite things to do with people I stay with. The coffee shop was very nice, I was particularly impressed by the little meeting room you could reserve in the back for larger groups - what a good idea, especially since I've often used coffee shops as a meeting place or study group location, a private area would have been very useful at times. After our coffee we went to get the car washed and vacuumed, then took a detour to the grocery store before getting lunch at Firehouse Subs. Quick and tasty!
Odd thing I noticed about Springfield - there seems to be some kind of price fixing going on with the gas prices. I use GasBuddy, an iPhone app that tells you the price of gas at various stations, listed by their distance from you or by the lowest to highest price (as reported by other users of the app). Most of the time you see a huge spread of prices, very rarely are more than a few at the same price in any given area, they differ by at least a few cents all the way up to maybe 50 or 60 cent spreads. In Springfield it was as though everyone had agreed on two or three set prices, because suddenly I would have 10-15 stations on the list all at the same price, then 10 or 15 more at the same slightly higher price. Gone was the $3.99 to $4.09 of California, or even the $3.39 to $3.69 of Colorado - here the majority of stations were at $2.99, with the next set arriving at $3.04! I have no idea why it was like this, but I did appreciate it all the same.
I helped Juliaette take the groceries home, and was on the road by about 2, arriving in St. Louis around 5:30. Will and Angie are another set of family reunion "cousins", Will's parents and mine are first cousins so that makes us second cousins? The two of them moved to St. Louis from the east coast about 4 years ago to be closer to her family, and they have two beautiful children and a very friendly and huge golden retriever named Walker. I arrived just in time for dinner - perfect timing! Angie was still at work so Will and the kids and I sat down to enjoy some shrimp curry. Will took Rollie, their 1 year old, up to bed while Quilla (age 4) and I painted for another hour or so. Have I mentioned how much I love playing auntie to all of my cousins/friends children? These kids never fail to amaze me with their creativity! The family lives in this fun century old house that has been modernized bit by bit over the years - it's very narrow but three stories tall, so I got to peek out under the eves from the guest bedroom on the third floor, looking out at the street through the treetops. Angie came home as we were reading bedtime stories; the three of us chatted and watched the first game of the World Series while sitting in the living room where I could sneak admiring looks at the blanket and chair fort that had been constructed in the dining room :) A great day with two welcoming families - what could be better?
Smiley note
Library bathroom graffiti ;)
Gracie!
Jack in the car on the way to Branson - I was always having so much fun when I was with the boys that I totally forgot to take pictures! I only got this one because I was sitting in the back row of the van and Jack was facing me
Morning lattes
At the "Historic Route 66" rest stop on I-44
Trees and fields and greenery
Our magnificent works of art! Quilla loves rainbows and mixing paint colors together to see what color they turn into, and was much more generous towards the color brown than I was at her age. Also, isn't the idea of using an egg carton brilliant?
Oh my gosh more latte art! What a wonderful set of paintings.
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