Our Travel Theme For This Year…

We headed to the St Louis, Missouri area. Why? What are our plans through this September?

We are following the LEWIS & CLARK TRAIL, the Corps of Discovery! Now, we have been along parts of it before and have even been in Oregon where they met the Pacific Ocean (and we visited the fort and areas there). We thought it would be fun to travel along the entire route.

Travel Day was from Columbia, Missouri, to St Peters, Missouri, which is a suburb of St Louis. Heading east on I-70 is finally getting a 3rd lane from St Louis to Kansas City. Thankfully we didn’t have a lot of construction to go through. 

We saw one billboard for Crane’s Country Store in Williamsburg, MO. It said “boots, bullets, britches, and bologna”. That gave us a good chuckle. The day was sunny and warm. As I read my journal to Kevin for a year ago today, we found out we were here at this campground for one night, one year ago today. HA 

After getting set up at 370 Lakeside Park Campground and visiting with some neighbors there, we left to go to Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery, in St Louis, for Find A Grave. (Footnote 1). This is a huge cemetery, over 260,000 buried here. 

Next over to Bellefontaine Cemetery to see William Clark’s grave site. He is the “Clark” of Lewis & Clark. We pulled up at 5:02 p.m. The gate was open, I saw the guard was there but I also saw a sign on the post saying it closes at 5:00 p.m. The guard said we could go on in, which was so nice. We asked where William Clark was buried and he said, “follow the service road around.” Well, I didn’t hear that, of course because I am deaf, and didn’t get it relayed to me so I pulled it up on Find A Grave and mapped us to it. Round up and down and round some more. Steep hills and lots of trees. We found the grave site and walked around.

We also walked around a few of the headstones around him and saw some of his children’s graves. As we left, the guard opened the gate for us. Kevin told him thanks and that we are following the Lewis & Clark trail. He said that is so very cool! 

There is starting to be severe weather. We noticed the paperwork and the lady at the check in place at the campground didn’t tell us where a storm shelter is. I checked out the map and see a shower/restroom/laundry building close to our site. That is where we will go if we need to get shelter.

“Spinny spinny boom boom” is how my friend, Bridget, describes tornados and I think big thunderstorms. Anyway, that was today! I lost count of how many “tornado warnings in your area” we got on our iPhones and siren warnings we got today. Even got 2 emails from this campground telling the storm shelter is in the shower/restroom/laundry building. It is small but just about 4 sites from us. It mentioned there will always have a staff member at the building during a warning. That is so good! We would drive over to the shelter but stay in the truck, about 10 feet from the building. We had good open view all around us so I watched to see if a tornado was coming. We did see a large circling motion but thankfully it didn’t fully develop or touch the ground. P.S. On Thursday morning the National Weather Service tweeted there were 5 tornados that touched the ground several miles away. No one hurt; little damage.

On Wednesday, out the door we ran to Sew Silly by Sharon! I had contacted her for sewing machine cleaning. I had asked my friend, Betty, who lives in the area if she knew of any good places around here. She didn’t, has only went to a fabric store once to buy scissors, and asked her Facebook community group. This was one recommended. I was impressed with how Sharon would respond by email through her website. She closes at 5:30 p.m. and is about 22 minutes away so the rush was on. We made it just fine. She doesn’t have fabric for sale, that we saw, just maintains and fixes sewing machines and sells them and longarm machines. In fact, she showed a portable longarm to Kevin where you put your machine on and guide it. It would fit on Kevin’s desk….HAHA. We are in good time because wait time is just about a week. Whew! Then we went to Amazon locker at QuickTrip for two packages: replacement headphone covers and a part for the truck, a relay something that is causing a check engine. For dinner Kevin picked Gold Apple Buffet and it is so fantastic I am adding the link here: https://www.goldenapplebuffet.com/missouri The deco inside is white walls and counters, and light colored floors. Very open feel and clean. And such a huge variety of food! We couldn’t believe our eyes. It was wonderfully delicious. 

Me: Is this place on the way to pick up my sewing machine when it is done? Him: This place is on the way to anywhere! Me: Remember how Apple Maps would remember a route if you have gone on it often? Him: Yes, after work it would tell me how minutes to home. Me: Well, I think Apple Maps should remember this place and put it on our route every day. Him: Yes! And Circle K (for our Diet Coke & Diet Dr Pepper) by the campground! We have our priorities right, right!?!😋 

On Friday Kevin flushed out our water softener, which was great, and needed it. He also installed a part on the truck that has something to do with the heating of the diesel before it starts. The old part literally fell apart in his hards. 

For dinner I made Cuban Sandwiches and the recipe was out of this world! So easy! And the marinade added so much. We had Cuban Sandwiches for the first time when we were in Florida. This was a new recipe for me. I was so happy to have my new hand-held juicer because it easily got a ton more juice out of the orange then when I do it with my hands! I had more pork tenderloin than the recipe called for so was able to put two in Food Saver bags, seal, and freezer. Yum! https://tastesbetterfromscratch.com/cuban-sandwich/

If you try it, let me know what you think. 😋

*The blog posts are taken from my daily travel journal. Would you believe – it takes me a 1/2 day every week to whittle down a week’s worth of journal so it won’t be too long for the post each week. HAHA Thank you for reading!

1. Find A Grave – https://www.findagrave.com/about