Day 7 - September 24

Day 7 , Sep 24, Cape Girardeau

Last night we had a great party with all my brothers, sisters, and their spouses in the area. Great food, good drink and even better conversation interspersed with some pretty funny jokes. Much thanks to Paul and Jeanine for arranging and hosting it all. It was so good to see my siblings again. Boy they are getting old.

This morning was spent visiting a few relatives, playing with Noah, and saying goodbye to my daughters.

Lisa and I got going South out of St. Louis early afternoon and arrived in Cape Girardeau about 2:15pm. Cape G is one of the earliest settlements West of the Mississippi River. Founded in the late 1700's and visited by Louis and Clark in 1802 when they were traveling north toward the mouth of the Missouri River. It was founded by a Frenchmen as a trading post and occupied by the Spanish as part of Upper Louisiana. Evidence of those occupations are still in minor evidence in the architecture and street names. It is a small city right on the river with a massive wall to prevent flooding when the river rises. That wall has been painted with a 1/3 of a mile long, colorful mural depicting the history of the town. Another 100 yard long mural on the wall has portraits of influential people born in or strongly associated with Missouri. Some everyone knows, Truman and Mark Twain, and I won't repeat all of them here but there were some surprises.

Left Cape G in midafternoon and traveled to Sikeston, MO, to get a motel room, good workout in the motel pool and then a trip to the famous Lambert's restaurant, Home of the Throwed Roll. What a gimmick. The food was ok, substantial and lots of good vegetable sides. Large portions of home cooked normal entrees: chicken, meatloaf, ham, catfish. When you hear the call, Hot Rolls, by the strolling server, you hold up a hand so he can see you from across the room (70 feet x 40feet) and he throws a large, hot yeast roll which you might or might not catch. One of ours ended up on the floor but no one seemed to mind. We had enough leftover to make a nice lunch for tomorrow.

For “Survivor” fans, we did get to watch the opening show but all the shows are an hour earlier in the Central Time Zone.

Tomorrow we plan a quick visit to Cairo, IL, then on to Memphis to see Elvis.

Day 5 and 6 - September 22 and 23

Day 5 & 6 (Sep 22 and 23) – Travel Day and Family Day

Dave here. What a great but tumultous two days. First off, Will's meal last night was really good as was his tequila. The grilled chard and garlic were super. Thanks, Will. You do good work.

 

At about 9:30pm at my daughter's house, we were watching tv when we heard a loud pop outside. Sounded like a small caliber gunshot to me. We looked outside and saw a gentleman standing by Lisa's car, his car parked nearby with lights on. Daughter Lisa got there first and I was right behind. He had sideswiped Lisa's Chevy and tore off the driver's side rear view mirror. Did not hurt the rest of the car nor himself. The street there is very narrow, with parking on both sides and two way traffic in which one car pulls into a bare spot while another passes. I even saw a city bus on that street, amazing. It's a wonder the street is not littered with side mirrors. Good of him to stop. Got info exchanged. Lisa very concerned about driving 400 miles to St. Louis area without a mirror there for passing. We scouted via internet for Chev dealers and found one open at 6:30am for service. I got up early and called, explained situation of travel and the kindly man said see you at 7am. We got there, waited a half hour to be informed there were none in stock, best option would be next day. My other daughter, Mara, and my grandson, Noah, who live in California, were arriving at 4pm in St. Louis and would be leaving on Wed with only one full day to visit. No way I was going to miss that visit so I put my portable, bipedal, vocal, rearview driver's side mirror (wife Lisa) in the back seat to check the left side before I made lane changes on I 70 and wherever. Got daughter Lisa and we headed West on the interstate an hour later than planned. The girls kept calling Chev dealers ahead to see if we could get the mirror and get it installed but with mixed results. Also lots of calls to insurance company. Finally got directed to a body repair shop very near the home of my brother and sisinlaw, Paul and Jeanine which is where we are now. More complications but the repair is supposed to be made today, Tuesday, 23d. We did arrive without incident in time to greet Mara and Noah's arrival. He is a beautiful and loving child.

Almost forgot. I am a devotee of the Roadfood radio spot and the website. There were many recommendations to stop in Indianapolis for lunch at John's Famous Stew, a tavern in the factory district. We did and were very glad of it. We ordered the specialty and it was the best beef stew I have ever tasted. Beef melts in the mouth, good potatoes and carrots, smothered in a wonderful near-gravy. Huge portion and we ended up bringing most of it with us for lunch today because Lisa wife and I were so full from the other specialty, the pounded, breaded pork loin sandwich which we split. It almost covers the dinner plate. Wonderful and I recommend it if you are ever that way. Well worth the stop and say hi to Pauline and her sister, the waitresses, from Gatlinburg, Tennessee, with appropriate accent, who will trade life stories with you before you leave. 

Continuing our drive along the highway there was this huge cross and no explanation as to why it was there. 

Happy 7th annivesary to Paul and Jeanine!.

 

Getting to spend lots of time with relatives and grandson. All the siblings and their spouses who live in the area are coming here to Paul's for an Italian dinner tonight. They are a loud and frisky bunch and it will be a shock for Noah, 1 ½ years old.

Decided to get a quick glimpse of the Piasa bird.  The story is the early explorers, Pier Marquette and LaSalle, saw a painting of a giant creature on the white, limestone bluffs along the Mississippi near what became Alton, my home town.  Here is a website about the legend if you are interested:http://www.altonweb.com/history/piasabird/.

 

Driving along the Mississippi River, Lisa spotted this beautiful cloud formation and had to take some photos.

 

We only have about 150 miles to drive tomorrow to Cape Girardeau, MO so we will leave a bit later in the day, waiting for Mara and Noah and Lisa daughter to leave for their planes. I miss them already.

Sunday, September 21 - Day 4

Day 4 – Football Day

Dave here. What a great day. Beautiful sunshine, mid 80's and low humidity. Everyone stayed in bed a little extra today, even me, up at 6:15am. Some good pumpkin donuts and sharing giant Asiago French Onion pretzel at the downtown market. Lisa and I went to Shiller Park a few blocks from the house. Very nice park with ponds, ducks and geese, lots of large shade trees. I got a good martial arts workout with lots of Tai Chi practice and I did all the Heian katas plus a few. We sat under the trees and read books for awhile and dozed. A real low key day. Lunch was a small meal of White Castle hamburgers, my favorites. Will, the chef, is preparing a good meal for tonight, probably at half time of the Broncos vs Seahawks game. He is making marinated salmon and Korean short ribs on the grill with lots of vegetables. Gotta go, Margarita time and the Broncos game is about to start. Go Payton!

Saturday, September 20 - Day 3

September 20 - Day 3

Lisa started this and Dave added stuff. Woke up leisurely and went to breakfast at Will's taco cart at a Farmer Market (note the singular). There was only one farmer and Will. The farmer was a Vietnam vet and we talked a bit and bought some nice vegetables for the dinner tonight. At Will's cart we had a Baja shrimp taco, which had mesquite sauteed shrimp, with organic local and green and purple cabbage and chipotle mayo; Chorizo and Potato – spicy pork chorizo with local organic potatoes and cotijo cheese, onions, tomatoes, lettuce and an egg; and mexican beef – grassfed organic ground beef with organic oregano, queso fresco cheese, local organic tomatoes and lettuce. Very creative and tasty. The queso fresco was new for me and I will get more.
Went to North Market which is a large indoor/outdoor market where you can get a wide variety of fresh vegetables and other food of top quality. We got some sun dried tomato and asiago ravioli that we will have for dinner.
Dave took most of the afternoon to make spaghetti sauce from Lisa's garden tomatoes and to prepare artichokes which we brought from our garden in Canton. The intent is to eat an Italian dinner when we get back from Mass. We went to 4 pm Mass at St. Mary's and Lisa likes to take photos of a new church that we attend. We were looking at stained glass windows and I turned around and saw a seminarian we had befriended in Canton, Michael Jablonski, standing at the back of the church. On the way out to Columbus, I had mentioned to Dave that we should go see him at the Josephinum, which is a seminary. He was in Canton a few summers ago and Dave had taken him out to lunch. What a small world.
We started the Italian meal with a first course of the artichokes, wonderful, tender, succulent. Had a very good Sicilian wine with the meal. Then the ravioli, top notch. We did not even cook the pasta or use much of the sauce we spent the afternoon making.
Leisurely day tomorrow watching football.

Day 2

September 19 – Day 2

38 degrees this morning. Got up and went to look at the Falls and saw a beautiful rainbow. Dave heard about DiCamillo's bakery so we went there for some pastries. They were delicious.
We decided that we need to return to Niagara Falls to do a bit more sightseeing.
We got on the road and will make it to Columbus, OH where Lisa and Will live. We had a nice drive with no heavy traffic most of the way. At the junction of interstate 190 and 90 in Buffalo there were sculptures of buffalo on the side of the road. Nice touch, Buffalo.
Along the highway the price of gas was $3.23. Wow! What a difference from Northern New York prices at $3.68!
When we got to the Ohio state line the speed limit changed to 70 mph.
We made it to Columbus. Will left to go to work with his food truck – Gringo Loco Taco. Dinner will be Schmidt's Sausages, red cabbage, and German potato salad. Yummy!
Tomorrow there is a Farmer's Market, where Will will have his food truck.
We will be here until Monday and then travel to Alton, IL – where Dave was raised.

We will have a more extensive photo album upon our return.

 

Day 1

Dave and Lisa's adventures 9/18/14 Day 1

What a great day. A bit stressful trying to get the house ready to leave for a month. Drained pipes, shut off water, made sure furnace worked, laid a pile of logs for a fire upon return, made sure sump pump and backup worked well and on and on. Loaded car and picked up Lisa at work at 2:15 and off to the races. We arrived in Buffalo at about 7pm and headed for the Anchor Bar to taste some of the original Buffalo chicken wings. I had ten hot with a mug of Genesee Cream Ale and Lisa had ten mild. Excellent, meaty, crispy, just the right heat and good blue cheese dressing. Some comments I read said they had slipped into tourist mode but we both thought they were great. The bar is decorated like an exhuberant TGI Fridays with motorcycles hanging all over the place. The walls are covered in license plates. We decided to go the Niagra Falls for the night since we did not have a schedule to keep. We are at the Days Inn close to the Falls. We just walked off the wings by strolling to the American Falls. The light show was on and “Anselisa” tried to get some photos but she had her long lens but needed the wider angle of the short lens. Oh,the anguish of the artist. Another try tomorrow morning.