Art in the park

We usually rent a car when we fly some place but sometimes in a big city it is not really a good deal to have a car most of the time. Arriving St Louis, parking for the car was as expensive as renting one.  Also most of what we were doing did not need a car.  The solution Uber or Lyft to the hotel and rent for the day.  

Today we grabbed our Avis car.  It was a few blocks down at the Westin and when we arrived, we had a bit of trouble finding it.  The sign was kind of small.  

Our first stop was Laumeier Sculture Park. It was about 15 miles from town and away from public transport.  Thus the need for a car. 

The park has about 60 outdoor sculptures and several nature trails.  We strolled about for a while looking at the art and enjoying the cool morning.  We had awoken to dense fog so it was initially not hot.  I really like the park but got punked. Walking in they had neon signs advertising ice cream. 

When I went to get a treat I found they had no ice cream, just a neon sign exhibition.  The signs were cool but I then had ice cream on the brain.  After the sculptures we headed off to Forrest park.   Our first stop was the visitor center for a map and to ask about ice cream. We found out they had it at the zoo.  

Now I usually wouldn't go to the zoo to just get ice cream but St. Louis has lots of free stuff.  The museums and zoo included.  We were warned at the visitor center that parking by the zoo was problematic.  We fixed this by driving over to the Art museum and parking there. Then it was a quick walk to the zoo.

The zoo was nice but loaded with kids, who would have thought?  We enjoyed looking at the animals and some of the other exhibitions like the butterfly house.  Yes they did have ice cream but I got distracted.  It was ZooToberfest and we ended up grabbing a bratwurst and a soft pretzel.

We looked at a few more animals and then hiked back up to the art museum.  This was also free and really cool.  First the building is from the 1903 Worlds Fair.  It had a variety of art from old European to modern.  They even had some medieval armor.  

The best feature was great air conditioning as it had gotten really hot and nice seats to rest.  Once we arted out, we took a drive  and explored the banks of the Mississippi.  The rains started to return so we dropped the car off and headed back to our hotel to clean up.  

An old friend picked us up and we had a very nice dinner at a French restaurant.  Then it was back to rest up for our next days adventure.  This is history now but Sunday night, Michael had formed in the gulf and was heading for us sort of.  The forecasting turned out to be excellent.  I saved the Sunday track and Thursday night looking back it was spot on.

I did not know how good the forecast would be so I started looking at our options. Should we head home? Do we need to go somewhere else?  After looking at the best guesses, I was still figuring Kentucky on Tuesday.  We would get some rain Wednesday but nothing dangerous and if all went well we could fly home on schedule Thursday even if we had to divert West to get behind the storm.  Well that's how it looked Sunday night.