11th Anniversary...Headed to St. Louis

 

Yesterday I took a trip down memory lane from all our anniversary trips over the past decade. We got the biggest laugh out of realizing we have gone to a city every single year…and we don’t even love cities! We did it again this year. We’ve been talking about going to St. Louis for several years. We have driven through it multiple times on our way to Kansas to visit my family, but we’ve never stopped to explore. I wanted to be sure we did it before we did our someday-trip on Route 66. (It will save us time then.)

            In short, this trip had the worst weather of any anniversary trip ever, and it was filled from start to finish with ridiculous, maddening stories. If we still had a podcast, this trip would have kept us well stocked for several weeks. But despite the bad weather and all that went wrong along the way, we managed to have some fun and we collected stories like nobody’s business. We also had a big chunk of time to simply rest and talk, which we probably needed more than we knew.

            We packed way too much (though please let the record show we actually used almost everything we took) and headed out on a pretty nice afternoon. We had a gorgeous sunset – and ridiculous traffic in Indianapolis. I am so glad Ryan is good with city driving!

            I actually did a little driving after that! This is rare, so we documented it.

            Illinois state sign was a fail…and Missouri’s was hidden, but I managed to find it!

            We arrived in St. Louis about 9 p.m. and of course it was completely dark by that time. Not only were we unfamiliar with the area, but we were staying in a loft…in a whole neighborhood of lofts. I am only sorry that you all missed watching the small-town kids trying to find the right building and then figure out a gate-opening app. It was…well…I thought we might end up on Dateline.

            After we finally got into the gate, we had to wrestle that app again to get into the building and then into the elevator…and then there was another code to get into the actual loft.

            I was not smart enough for that building.

            But when we got into the loft, it was really adorable. I’m such a sucker for exposed brick and original floors.

            I also love big windows and a view.

            Quite a start to the trip…but come back! I have so many more stories!