Home again, home again, jiggity jig.
We are back from our little West Lafayette – St Louis road trip. Friday it was West Lafayette for a visit with Sue and a business meeting for Lise. Saturday morning it was an artery clogging breakfast at the XXX diner and off to St. Louis. We were in St. Louis Saturday and Sunday night, then Monday we headed back to West Lafayette for the night. Now we’re back here in Okemos, staring blankly at each other. A quick little thousand-mile road trip made possible by Ike’s Autobahn, AKA the Interstate Road System.
Except for a lot of driving, the whole trip was kind of laid back. The focus was visiting family and that’s what we did. Spent time with Stefan, Kasey, and baby Ava. There was some play time. St. Louis has bunches of cool restaurants and brew pubs and we got to partake of some. Stefan and Kasey also took us to Cherokee Street with its funky shops. In a lot of ways St. Louis reminds me of where Molly is in Philadelphia. An older city undergoing something of a renaissance. Both have areas where you can find all the trouble you want. Neither is a place I would want to send my kid to grade school. But both have plenty of areas that give the place some soul. More so than where I am now.
We also did the St. Louis Botanical Garden a couple times; once for a walk and another time to see their fall light show. If you like playing around with form and light the Botanical Garden has plenty of photographic possibilities. I could spend a lot of time there.
Wilted lotus leaf.
Lise messing with me when I’m trying to take pictures of lotus leaves.
Some cell phone light show pictures. The light show was not at all what I expected. I was thinking Christmas lights wrapped around trees. They did some spectacular laser shows and I wished I had brought by regular camera.
In the “living on past glory” category, we have Wingate Indiana. On the way between West Lafayette and St. Louis we drove through Wingate. I always knew basketball is a big Indiana thing. Think the movie Hoosiers, based on the story of Milan, Indiana. Think Larry Byrd and dozens of other Indiana basketball stories. Then there’s the storied past of Wingate. State basketball champions not once, but twice. Over a hundred years ago. Before WW I. Forty years before Milan won the State championship. First electronic scoreboard too, probably right after the invention of electricity. Do I see another movie possibility here?
Ya gotta go with what ya got.
Ed's and Lise's Biggish Years 