Scattered Leaves

The minutes ticked by slowly waiting in our hotel room for the eclipse to begin. I obsessively checked the weather forecasts while the kids watched TV and played on their iPads. I kept glancing outside, watching other hotel guests arrive or leave, while some sat on the benches outside the doors. We had planned to setup shop in the grassy area just across the street from the hotel, which would afford us a nice view of the sky. Added bonus:   a few shade trees could help keep us somewhat cool in the muggy heat. But something just didn’t feel right to me about sitting right outside the hotel. For one, there were street lights everywhere. I knew the lights would pop on as soon as it became dark and I didn’t want to compromise our view. I began to search for nearby parks and found one about 2 miles away. Tiff agreed with me that we should try heading there (it was 10:15 at this point) and see if there were any parking spots. There was a playground and soccer fields, so we figured t...

We didn't do a ton today. We shopped a little, drove around the town, ate some Japanese food at a local place and now I'm getting ready to watch the next episode of Game of Thrones. So glad the hotel room has HBO! We scored a puddle jumper suit for Fiona from the local Goodwill (brand spanking new, no less!) and she was loving it in the pool. The forecast isn't looking real promising. Most of Missouri will be under cloud cover. We may be making a hasty retreat from our current position in the wee morning hours in hopes of finding a less cloudy locale. I've been looking up weather forecasts of many towns around us. Most are the same. I think we'd have to drive a long ways to get a better forecast at this point and I don't know that I want to brave the hordes of traffic for another dice roll. Our hotel and this town aren't very busy tonight--something I didn't expect. Perhaps others had checked the forecast and already made other plans? Or maybe not ma...

The common Poor Man's Eclipse Well, Saturday was interesting! We started the day by heading to the Old Courthouse in STL to get some tickets to ride to the top of the Arch. Along the way we noticed a cool phenomenon. Something I dubbed a "Poor Man's Eclipse", where the sun was being blocked by the Arch. It looked pretty cool and with the weather forecast calling for clouds and possible thunderstorms...it may be the closest to an actual eclipse that we get to see (we hope not). The Arch was quite the specimen and if you're ever in the area, you should definitely check it out. We watched a video documenting the construction and design of the Arch and it was really something to see. Those men and women who worked on the Arch must have been made of steel themselves. Many were 600 feet above the ground walking around without any safety harnesses (it was the 60s after all, where either they didn't give a damn or they didn't have time to be scared). We rode t...