Wacko's in Waco

TEXAS RANGERS
The history of the Rangers goes back to before Texas became a state, as a matter of fact they were first formed in 1823, when Texas was still part of Mexico, to protect the settlers from Indian attacks and there has been some form of Rangers ever since.
The museum covers from the very beginning to modern times. They have a 45 minute film which was done by the History Channel and gives you a great history of the Rangers.
I'm just going to post some pictures with notes on this one. If you have ten minutes the following link is a good read about the Rangers:
Texas Rangers




Click on the picture above, it's not great but it's the best I could do. These are the Texas Rangers of today, all 135 of them to cover a State that contains 268,601 square miles. In comparison the precinct house I worked out of in Detroit covered 29 square miles and we had 240 cops assigned there.



The Rangers like to fancy their firearms up just a little bit, here's a few examples.








Some just a little fancier then others & a little longer.





What do you get the Ranger that saved your kidnapped 5 year old daughter, why a thank you 45 cal automatic.

The very first Texas Ranger Badge.





Two rifles that were used to Kill Bonnie & Clyde.

Picture of the Retired Rangers that chased down Bonnie & Clyde










Texas Ranger and the Lone Star State



Texas Rangers on Patrol in 1896








Cameron Park Zoo
As we walked from the parking area to the entrance of the Zoo all you could hear was a loud screaming, after hearing it for about ten minutes we found out that it was coming from the Gibbon Monkey, which sits in the top of a tree and spend the morning screaming until around noon. He does this to mark his territory or else to give all the early visitors a headache, this is a short video of one doing his morning thing, turn on the sound and cover your ears.




Here is another video of a Coral Snake winding his way around and through a plant, this is the most movement that we've every seen out of a snake and especially one so colorful. Remember the saying "Red next to Yellow will kill a fellow, Red next to Black is a friend of Jack", that way you wont pick up the wrong type of snake to play with.



Hang in there with us, this is the last video, the only thing I've ever see a Galapagos Tortoise move was his head but as soon as we walked up this one decided to run across the enclosure for us, well if you can call this running, this is actual speed.





OK now a little about the Zoo, this zoo is set up probably better then any other one we've been to, instead of having to decide which section you want to go to first like most zoo's this one you have two choices, left or right, just follow the trails and you will see the entire zoo. Other then the above videos I think our favorite, which I've never seen before, was the Night House, here everything was lite by black lights so you could see the night creatures, bats, raccoons, owls and such moving around and doing things. The bats were flying around and eating from some hanging bananas, one small owl had a mouse that he was ripping apart to eat.

We got to the Zoo right at noon and there were three school bus's and about thirty cars with parents just leaving, so there were maybe 50 to 75 people in the entire zoo with us.

This is a white Diamondback Rattler, it's not a true Albino Diamondback because it doesn't have the pink Eyes. But he sure has a mean look on his face




Loved the Owls with the black lite.









This giraffe had cleaned all the leafs off of the trees around him so he had to start kneeing to get the feed on the ground


We were this close to the big cat but there was a thick piece of glass between us.







Ever have a real bad hair day.






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We stumbled across a place called Heritage Village, we thought that it was going to be a little like Greenfield Village, but it turned out to be a bunch of old time buildings with, grain mill, blacksmith shop, general store, diner, and such and they were trying to sell you their wares at inflated prices, so we just walked around the gardens and building.










I'm a Pepper, she's a Pepper wouldn't you like to be a Pepper too.

Gee! Guess where we went today, that's right the Dr Pepper Museum, which is located in the original Bottle plant building. It was OK but unless you're a confirmed Dr Pepper nut like Cathy is, you probably don't need to go. There were two floors of displays and a few interesting facts about Dr Pepper but we found the most entertaining thing there was a 30 minute film showing their commercials from probably around the 1960's to the present. That brought back a lot of memories and a lot of laughs (forgot how funny some of them were). After that we drove over to the First Street Cemetery and walked around in the cold wind looking at all the old graves and stones.

This is why they always had the 10-2-4 on their bottles and signs.


Go ahead and sing along with Barry, you know you want to.






Final Note for Waco, if you've never been here the reason that you go Wacko is the way the streets are set up, they all run NE to SW or NW to SE, so you can't drive across town east to west without zigzaging and making 300 turns. Then they have five lane streets with 4 lanes running one direction and only one lane running the other, very few traffic lights but a illion 4 way stop intersections.

tippecanoe and TYLER TEXAS too

Camp Ford, Tyler Texas

Built as a Civil War POW Prison it was originally 3.5 acres in size with a 16 foot tall stockade walls and held about 650 prisoners. In March 1864 the Commander was told that another 3000 prisoners were en-route to the prison and that he was to enlarge it to handle this number. They did this by cutting all the logs in the stockade fence down to 6 foot and using the other part of the log to expand the walls, this enabled them to enclose 10 acres to handle the extra prisoners. The funny part about his is that a group of prisoners had been working for a few months on a tunnel and they were very close to being out side the prison walls. After the enlargement their tunnel took them to the middle of the new enclosure.
Camp Ford also had the distinction of having the most Naval POW's of any prison during the Civil War, the last prisoners were marched out of the prison in March of 1865 at which point is was abandon.

East Texas Oil Field Museum in Kilgore

At the start of 1930 the population of Kilgore was just about 500, and the town was destined to become another ghost town. Then oil wildcatter Columbus M. "Dad" Joiner came to town from Oklahoma, he convinced a few people to put up some money and Daisy Bradford to let him drill for oil on her property. He had picked three different drill locations, so with a bunch of second hand and broken down equipment he started drilling, the first two sites were dry holes, while towing the derrick on skids to the third site the skids broke down so he decided to drill right were it sat.
On October 3, 1930, the well known as the Daisy Bradford #3 hit oil and marked the discovery of the East Texas Oilfield, word spread and almost over night wildcatters and oil companies from across the USA made there way to Kilgore. Later when he had some money from the gusher he went back to the original third site and with new equipment he drilled a "DRY HOLE". By 1935 this little town of 500 had increased to over 12,000, with more then 1,100 oil wells within the city limits, giving one area in downtown the nickname "the worlds richest acre".
Today only 80 reproduction oil derricks dot the downtown area of Kilgore which they decorate during the Christmas season as they did with the originals.
So it makes sense that they would locate the East Texas Oil Museum here in Kilgore. When you first enter the museum it doesn't appear to be much, but after you view a short introductory film and step through the doors into Boomtown you'll change your mind. Boomtown is set up as a typical street during the mid 1930's with all the stores, businesses, and traffic. The movie theater still shows movies, of course they only show one and that's about how Kilgore became a boomtown, but don't miss it, it has a surprise ending, also one of the store fronts has an elevator which once you get in and close the doors it takes you on a ride 3500 feet down and explains the different rock formations and how oil is formed and found.
One very interesting think we found out is that during World War Two, they built and pipeline that started in Kilgore and traveled 1,400 miles to the New Jersey shoreline to supply the military with the oil they needed to fight the war.



Once we finished up with the museum we walked two blocks across the campus of Kilgore College to visit the Rangerettes Museum, what is a Rangerette, I don't know but there was a huge photo of a pretty cowgirl on the front of the building so I figured we better go and find out, and we did. I am now a Rangerettes groupie.
In 1939 the Dean of the college decided that he need a plan to draw more females to the college, and also something that would keep the fans in their seats during half time at the football games, rather then ducking under the bleachers to sip on the contents of their little hip flask. So started the Rangerettes.
The Rangerettes are now the world's best know collegiate drill team, dressed in little red,white and blue cowgirl outfits, they manage to keep people in their seats where ever they go. They have preformed all across the U.S.A., have been on several world tours and many Presidential Inaugurations, they have preformed at every Cotton Bowl since 1951 and are the only organization to be invited back to perform at the East-West Shrine Bowl.
Again this museum is on the small side but is very interesting, the guide there was a student at the college and graduated in 1940 so she missed out on being a Rangerette but her little sister was one, her son was a manager for the Rangerettes and also married one, her second son married a Rangerette, her daughter was a Rangerette, as was her grand daughter, do you see where this is going. It's like my dad played football for Ohio State or University of Michigan and I'm going to play for them too. Once the Rangerettes get into your family bloodline they're there forever.
While Cathy was talking with the guide I watched a DVD on the Rangerettes stage show, which they only do for four days in April every year, I would have bought a copy but they didn't have any there, but if you want a little glimpse of what they are like you can check out this amateur video on Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsa2PCE1NhM





How do you end a great day, by having some of the best BBQ in Texas, it doesn't look like much and it wasn't, uneven floors, seating for about 10, no two chairs matched, the table was wobbly and the room was filled with the delicious eye watering smell of smoked meat, who could ask for anything more, that alone made the trip worthwhile. We ordered the combo plate, first he put on the ribs, then the brisket, then the pork and finally the sausage, with it all piled nice and high he covered it with their special BBQ sauce, aside of potato salad and beans with bread and onions, throw in a bottomless mug of sweet tea and you're ready to sit down and eat. Did I mention that all of this was only $8.00 a head, tax included. Owned by the same family for the past 50 years, mother to son and now the grandson is getting ready to take over.

We were going to spend Saturday at the 75th Annual Texas Rose Parade but something's came up and we were unable to attend, maybe next year, so we'll tour the Rose Gardens Monday instead.


American's Rose Capital
Today we went over to the Tyler Rose Garden, it covers 22-acres and is the nation's largest rose showcase, there are close to 500 different varieties of roses and 38,000 rose bushes planted here. As I mentioned before we missed the Rose Festival during the weekend which was probably a good thing because we had the entire gardens to ourselves today. As it turns out they prune back all the roses in September so that they will be in full bloom for the festival and that means for us too.
We've never seen so many roses, every size and color that you could think of, we spent about two hours walking around and I think we still missed a lot of areas.
We loved the names that were given to some, Betty Boop, Good n Plenty, Sexy Rexy, it took some thought as to were to plant the different bushes, for example the Abe Lincoln was planted right next to the Queen Elizabeth, but for some reason the John F Kennedy was planted about a 100 yards away form the Marilyn Monroe Rose.
I took a ton of pictures but it's one of those places that you just have to see in person.



But as everybody knows, there is only one rose in Texas and that's
THE YELLOW ROSE OF TEXAS.


H.A.M.M.
Ever have one of those days that just starts out normal and then something happens to make it a real big WOW day, we had one of those today. It's our last day in the Tyler area, so we figured that we would just run over to the Historical Aeronautical Military Museum, give it a quick look and come home to pack things up. We entered the museum and after about ten minutes a short little old guy came up to us and introduced himself as one of the volunteers and said that if we didn't mind he would just walk along with us and try to answer any questions we might have. We said sure and started looking at some of the displays, then Cathy asked him what his favorite display was and he said "step right down here and I'll tell you about the Naval Aviators". After a few minutes we noticed that the name on his name tag matched the one that was on the uniform that was on display, yep, it was his favorite because it was him. Lt. Comm. Leo "Smoky" Sabota, he joined the Navy when he was 17 and became a carrier pilot getting his wings the day the war ended in Europe, but as he pointed out we had another one a few years later called Korea. During Korea he flew a Corsair and was CO of an all-weather night squadron, which means they always took off and landed on the carrier in the dark, during Korea he flew off of the Carriers Leytei, Intrepid and Valley Forge. He was also the first Navy pilot to fly 100 missions during the Berlin Air Lift. After the air lift he went back to fighters and continued up through the Vietnam era jets. After retired from the Navy he got his Doctorate and was a professor teaching Political Science at a small collage out west for 25 years before settling in Tyler Texas. We spent about 3 hours with him talking about his life and career and could have talked for another 3 hours. I couldn't even start to repeat the stories he told us, out of the 6 volunteers that were there today we hit the jackpot with Leo. Almost forgot the first trainer that Leo flew was a Bi-plane.

Even without Leo the museum is well worth the time to visit, there are about 15 different fighter on display outside on the tarmac and about 24 different displays inside. They had a great section on the woman pilots through out the wars, from the WASP which were only allowed to fly non-combat, normally ferrying the planes from base to base, to Jill "Raggz" Long and her 60 combat missions in A-10 Thunderbolt II (Warthog) in Afghanistan & Kosovo.













The story behind the picture of the Knight and Devil is that on the eve of the World War One ending, two soldiers got a little bit drunk celebrating, they decided that they wanted a souvenir so they went outside to the airfield and cut the side out of one of the fighter planes (bi-wing and made with a canvas skin) they rolled it up and brought it home where it was put away and forgotten about for about 90 years until some relative unrolled it and figured that it was probably something the museum would like to have. A little research on the Internet and they found pictures of the original plane.

Time to get home and pack up for tomorrow we head to Waco.

Living in HOPE...Hope, Arkansas that is

Going to spend a few days in Hope, Arkansas just to see what's in the area.

Today we drove about 8 miles north to the little city of Old Washington, pop. 148 people, Old Washington is very unique in that the 90% of the city is a restored state park museum, the city is restored to how was between 1824 -1889.

The Southwest Trail/Military Road ran right through the center of town and any pioneers heading for Texas had to pass through this way, making it a very large center for commercial or profession assistance en route. This is where you picked up anything that you were going to need in Texas, the population increased until it became the county seat for Hempstead County. In 1863 when Little Rock fell to the Union forces Old Washington became the Confederate Capitol of Arkansas. When the railroad by passed Old Washington in 1874 the city's 15 minutes of fame were over. Fires in 1875 & 1883 destroyed almost the entire business district and pretty much brought an end to the town. Around 1930, Arkansas decided to rebuild the Confederate Capitol, over the years different foundations started restoring the old buildings and in 1973 the state made it a state park.

Enough history, we pulled into town about 11am and saw that they had a tour leaving at 11:30 so we signed up for that, there are over 40 restored buildings and the tour takes you to eight of them, each week or so they change what buildings are included in the tour so every time you come you see something new and different. Also very clever for them to do this because you have to keep coming back to see the entire town and paying for the tours.


Our tour included 4 different homes of notable citizens, the Courthouse, The print Museum, the Williams Tavern (more on this later) and the Edwards weapon museum. As I said the tour started at 11:30 and we visited the Crouch House (1859), the
outside of the house is entirely
restored but the main room inside
they restored the left half of the room and left the right side the way it was so you could see the difference, the rest of the rooms all had some part of the room left so that you could see what was behind the wall and the type of construction that was used.








Remember Williams Tavern, well everybody in the park including the guides take a lunch break from 12noon to 12:30, so what do the seven people that are on the tour do, go tour the Tavern and have lunch while you're doing it. Everyone was in period costume so we enjoyed an 1832 style lunch until it was time to meet up with guide and resume our tour.


The Print Museum was where the Washington telegraph was printed, there were about 12 different types of early printing press on display and the curator operated a few of them to show the difference in speed between the different era's. Mind your P's & Q's, this saying was started in the printing business, since they would grab the letters from the letter box and the P's & Q's were exact opposites, especially when you where looking at a reversed letter they had to be very careful of what they grabbed, so mind your P's & Q's. Another tidbit while I'm on a roll, capital letters were keep in the upper letter case and non-capital letters were keep in the lower letter case, hence upper and lower case letters.

The Gun Museum has approximately 300 to 400 weapons on display, covering everything from the 1500's to modern day.

The BOWIE KNIFE
We really wanted to tour the Blacksmith Shop, but it's opening day for bow season for deer and the blacksmith is a big hunter. This is the blacksmith shop (owned by James Black) that made the famous "Bowie Knife", Jim Bowie stopped by the shop one day and told the smithy what type of knife he wanted made up, he then went to Little Rock and returned a month later on his way to Texas, and the Alamo, the blacksmith had made two knifes one exactly like Bowie wanted and another that was the same but had a double edge, he told Bowie to take which ever one he wanted, Bowie took the modified one.

When Bowie ordered the knife he told James Black that he wanted something large enough and with enough heft to it that it would take a man's head off in one swipe, apparently he got what he asked for, for a few months later when he was in Texas three men who had been hired to kill him attacked him in a saloon, he killed all three with the knife and one was almost decapitated. Once the story spread the blacksmith was over run with orders for the great Bowie knife, unfortunately the blacksmith was disabled a little while later and was unable to make anymore Bowie knifes. Everybody has an idea of what the knife looked like but the original was lost at the Alamo and none of the others (made by this blacksmith) have been located. This blacksmiths knifes were said to be so special because he had discovered the secret of making Damascus Steel, but that's another story.

The tour is very well done, every building had a person in character for that time and building to tell you about the history of the building and town. Our $8 tour (not including lunch) ended up taking close to 4 and a half hours, they do offer a shorter tour with just 2 or 3 buildings if you don't have the time for the full tour.







There are three different U.S. Champion trees in the park, this is the Magnolia Tree, there was also a Pecan and a Catalpa.






In Search of Diamonds and the easy life:

Today we became "Diamond Hunters" not very good ones but we tried. For years we have been wanting to go to the only diamond mine in the USA, it's a state park in Arkansas. They plow up about 38 acres of land and you just walk around and pick up the diamonds that are lying in the dirt at your feet, at least that's what we thought. After paying our $6.50 a head to get into the park we ran to the plowed fields to find our fortune in brilliant gems, we did make a fantastic discovery, that after walking around in the mud with your heads down looking for the find of the year it's almost impossible to straighten your neck out again. Looks like the grand kids are going to have to work their way through collage, sorry.

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I'm sneaking this in because I forgot to add it to the Arkansas National Guard information, I've never seen or heard of this before and found it very funny and interesting.

German Prisoner of War Class Ring


POW's were allowed to purchase these class rings from salesman that traveled from base to base.

Little Rock, Arkansas "THE ROCK"

We're in Little Rock Arkansas for a few days, the first thing that did was visit MacArthur Park, named of course for General Douglas MacArthur. The Arkansas Military Museum is located here and is housed in Tower Building, which was built as part of the state armory before the Civil War and is the only building from that time that is still standing, it is also the building that the General was born in when it was used as an Officers Quarters.



During WWll, a James Allison worked for the Houston Press, he ended up collecting over 4600 photos that were sent back by war correspondents and that we not used by the paper, about 100 of the photos are on display here and are worth the trip alone.

Bataan Death March



German bombing of London









Versatile Jeep making a creek crossing.

French boy teaching the pilots french phrases, click on the pic to see what he's teaching them.






I put this picture of Black Jack Pershing to give you a little history on his nickname, one of his early commands was of the 10th Cavalry in Montana, the Buffalo Soldiers, because of this the cadets back at West Point referred to him as "Nigger Jack" when they were rebuffed for this it was changed to "Black Jack" and that stayed with him the rest of his life. It should be noted the General Black Jack Pershing was very instrumental in getting the black troop into combat rather then doing support operations in the rear.


Since we are Detroit Lions Fans we found this piece of history interesting.


Click to read.








There is a large display that covers everything that went on between MacArthur and Truman, they have a lot of papers that are marked TOP SECRET on display to explain what happen.



We were going to go down to the Riverfront and asked the curator where the best place to eat was, without any hesitation she said "the Clinton Library" she also advised us to tell them when we go in that we were just going to the restaurant and we would not have to pay the entrance fee.



The name of the restaurant is "Forty Two" figure it out.

We both had the Presidential Club Sandwich, the waiter told use the President Bill was the creator of this sandwich and it's what he has every time he stops by. All I can say is that you might not agree with his politics but you will love his sandwich, this was the best sandwich I can recall having. It comes with your choice of fries, fresh fruit or chads.



After lunch we went out back and took a walk along the riverfront to Market Place downtown, they have developed the downtown riverfront into a beautiful park which stretches for about a mile, equipped with trolley cars, bike/hike paths, statues, footbridges across the river and a large Farmers Market with every type restaurant you can think of.




Across the river in North Little Rock is the Submarine Razorback, this is the longest serving submarine, built for the US Navy in WWll, when the Navy retired it they sold it to the Turkey Navy who used it for another 30 or so years and the sold it to the city. It is open for tours and is currently being restored to US Navy standards.



One of the reasons we stopped here was to see another Whispering Giant, this one is on display in Riverfront Park but does not have any information about it, so everybody just looks at it and wonders.


Also found this statue of Revolutionary War Hero Casimir Pulaski, or on second thought it might be Elvis and he's alive in Little Rock, you heard it here first.






Now across the bridge to North Little Rock.

Went to the Arkansas Nation Guard Museum today which is located on base at Camp Robinson. It's funny prior to 911, to get on a military base all you did was drive through the gate and go where ever you wanted, but since then you know have to stop at the gate and show a civilian security officer, not the MP's or Air Police but a civilian security guard, your license, registration and proof of current insurance and they will issue you a pass. No checking the truck of the car or anything like that, I guess if you have current insurance you can't possibly be a terrorist.


The story behind this picture is that as these three jets were returning from a mission in Korea the pilot in the center jet had his oxygen malfunction and his plane kept rolling over and going into a dive, it would then straighten out for a bit then go into another dive. The two other pilots figured out what was happening and flew to his side, they placed their wings right under his by about 15 inches, this created a wind flow that kept his jet level and in a slight decline. They flew like this for about 30 minutes until the jets were low enough that they did not need the oxygen, the middle pilot came to got control of his jet and they all returned safely bake to base.

The museum covers the Arkansas Guard from 1804 to present and has some very nice displays and a ton of old picture which were great.



The Gatlin gun, invented by Dr Gatlin, he figured that it would end the war faster and save lifes.


The Yeater Collection

A little more Lewis and Clark stuff

We drove over to Cairo, Illinois to visit Fort Defiance, this is located at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, this is where Lewis and Clark made camp for six days in November of 1803. This is the first time that they are to see the Mississippi River, here Lewis taught Clark how to read Longitudes and Latitudes, this was important since the mouth of the Ohio River begins the 3rd Principal Meridian, what ever that means.
This location has always been important to history as you can read, Click on the picture to read about it.






Here's a panoramic picture I took while standing with my heels in the water right at the confluence.

Click to enlarge

This park was really in terrible shape, it might be due to the recent flooding, but everywhere we walked there were discarded beer cans, bottles and tons of other junk, of course when we left here we drove through the city of Cairo and it wasn't any better.
It's a shame that it's been allowed to get this way, Point Pleasant, Ohio has an area very similar to this, the confluence of the Ohio River and the Kanawha River, the history is almost identical, yet they have a restored Fort filled with historical displays, the town is spotless and filled with tourist.

Meet me in St Louis

BUSCH STADIUM, Day One
We got into camp and got set up early enough that we had time to drive over to St Louis and spend an hour tying to find a parking place that didn't coast $15.00, we finally found a three hour meter that was open so we grabbed that. After putting a pocket full of quarters in the meter we took off for Busch Stadium to take their tour, we got there at 2 PM and the people were already lining up
for tickets for tonight's game. The tour took just about an hour and
cover the better part of the stadium, we got to go down on to the field (don't even think of
touching the grass), sit in the Cardinals dugout, mess around in the
booth used by the TV announcers. We went into the Cardinals Club dining area, their are 660 green seats right behind home plate and if you have one of these seats you get to eat and drink free in the Cardinal Club, as much as you want until the seventh inning, of course these seats are $14,000 and you must buy a minimum of two. Then they took us to the Champions Club which is similar but the seat are on the second deck and are only $120 per game.
It really is a beautiful stadium, their building a huge complex right across the street where the old stadium was which will be restaurants, shops and condos. Outside the stadium they is a large statute of, who else,
Stan "The Man" Musial, to demonstrate what a great hitter he was the tour guide pointed out that his life time batting average was .336, he hit .336 against both right and left handed pitchers, he also ended his career with the same number of hits on the road as he had at home.

Botanical gardens, Day Two
There are three Interstates that share the bridge crossing the Mississippi, I-70, I-64 & I-55, so as soon as you cross the nightmare begins trying to figure out which lane to be in, which exit or ramp to use to stay on the freeway you want, then just to help you out they have construction on two of the three freeways. We figured that it was going to be a small gardens since it was in the city and that not to many flowers would be in bloom for late September, boy were we wrong. It's Saturday morning and we had
trouble finding a parking spot when we got there, we asked one of the parking attendants why there was such a crowd, and he told us that there were 13 weddings taking place today. Once we got through the main entrance and building and into the garden a little ways it was almost like we were the only ones there, this place was so big it could have handled 5 times the crowd. According to my pedometer we walked three miles and only covered about 60% of the garden, this has turned out to be our new favorite garden and we are already thinking of a return trip during may to see all the spring blooms. This entire garden was Henry Shaw's home and was built for his enjoyment, he ended up deeding the property to the city of St Louis as long as it
remained a garden open to the public.

They have different traveling displays and this time it was a sculpture named Nikkei or something like that, as you can see by the pictures he like his women on the large size. While walking around we came across three of the weddings and a few different areas were there was musical entertainment, when leaving there was a wind quartet in the lobby playing along with some wine tasting. If you like gardens this is an absolute must see, and plan on spending the better part of the day.

Football Sunday Day Three

Rainy Day Four

It's cloudy and it's going to be an all day rain so we just did some junking at the local stores.

The Zoo at Forest Park Day Five
Forest Park is the location of the 1904 World's Fair and still has a few building that remain from the fair, we never got a chance to explore the park it self as the zoo wore us out, the park is about 2 miles long and a mile wide, very big. The zoo is divided into 5 sections, we managed to cover two of them, the Historic Section, which is the original zoo, all the original buildings are here and it has the birds, reptiles and sea lion show. The original open flight house from the 1904 World's Fair is still here and used for the larger birds, cranes, ducks and such so they can fly freely around. The other area we did was called Red Rock and housed mostly African animals, the two best things were the giraffe's lean right over the wall and you can feed them leafs, very up close and personnel. There is a lion that just had 5 cubs a few months ago and they were very, very active, mom tried laying around but the cubs weren't having any of that, they were jumping on her, chewing on an ear or fighting her tail until she would shake them off and start to run away. As she was trotting away one of them leaped up on her back just like an adult would do when attacking an antelope, the mom stopped and fell over on her side just like the antelope would have done, then she gave him a big lick on the face for a job well done. We'll tackle the rest of the zoo next time we're here.




GATEWAY ARCH & MUSEUM Day Six
I first saw the Gateway Arch in 1976 on a motorcycle trip and have wanted to get back her and ride to the top ever since, well I finally made it back. The ride to the top is quiet an experience, the tram that takes you to the top is made up of a number of small, very small cars, they are designed for five people to sit in a space that two people would be uncomfortable in, after a four minute ride you crawl out through the door which is about four feet tall and 18 inches wide to find out that you are on the top of the world. The walls are angled out and have carpet on them so you kind of lean out on them to look out the windows and see that there is nothing between you and the ground over six hundred feet below. it gives you a pretty nice view of the Mississippi River and St Louis. After getting back down to ground level we spent and hour at the Lewis and Clark Museum which is underground of the Arch. Across the freeway and still part of the national Park is the old Courthouse, it has been restored and house's a museum with information on the Dred Scott court case which was held in this very courthouse. Dred Scott and his wife were slaves who sued their owner for their freedom, the local courts awarded them their freedom but when it was appealed to the US Supreme Court it was overturned and they were returned to there owner. It's an interesting story and history that covers about 12 years of their life and has an unusual ending.































River Dubois Day Seven
Easy day today just a ten mile drive to The mouth of the River Dubois, this is where Lewis and Clark made camp, just north of St Louis, for the winter to build up their supplies before they headed up the Mississippi in the spring.
They have a full size model of the keel boat that they used, but it's cut in half right down the center, front to back, to show how they used every little space to pack their supplies. Out back is a reconstructed fort that they built and lived in during the winter. Back to camp to watch the baseball playoffs.