A Weekend In St. Louis

So this past weekend we decided to go to St. Louis (partly cause we wanted to go see the arch and also cause we needed to cross Illinois off our list and it's right next door to St. Louis). We invited our friends, Jamie and Kevin (they have actually become our travel friends, it's quite fun!) and we had a total blast. We got in late Friday night, so the festivities didn't start til Saturday. Boy, what a day! We went to the arch and went up into it! It was actually pretty cool. I had always thought it was made of stone for some reason but it's made of metal. Anyway, the little tram thing you go up to the top in is ridiculously small. I pictured something like an elevator for five people but I was WAY off.... It is this super small little cubicle with 5 seats crammed in there and barely enough head room. You really had to get close to strangers and if your claustrophobic you can forget about going up there. So we made it to the top and looked out the windows over Missouri and Illinois and had our fill and went down. Then we took a ride and had our lunch on a ferry boat down the Mississippi River. After we drove over into Illinois, had some amazing ice cream from the good 'ol D.Q. and started our way back to the hotel.

This is where some excitement starts..... While in Illinois, we stopped at a welcome center and they had a weather radar thingy and it said that there could be tornado's in the area...... WHAT? TORNADO'S?? FLIP! It was a really cloudy day and the clouds were super low and moving really fast. So on our way past downtown St. Louis, the weather was flipping out and THE SKIES WERE GREEN! Um..... weren't the skies green in The Wizard of Oz before the tornado took Dorothy away?? YES, yes they were! I was startin' to get a little uneasy but was still hopin' that nothing would happen. Wellllllll........ it started to rain REALLY hard and even had hail mixed in it. UH, yah ANOTHER sign of a FREAKIN' TORNADO. It started to rain the hardest rain I have EVER seen in my 26 years of life. We could barely see the hood of our car let alone the car lights in front of us. IT WAS FREAKY! We were on a freeway and only able to go about 5 miles an hour.... LITERALLY! So the rain lasted for maybe 5-10 minutes and then it slowed up a ton. We noticed that there weren't really any cars out on the road so we were thinking "OH great.... all the locals know that they should be off the road and we are still on the road on an over pass trying to figure out what the "H" we should do!" Well, we went around a bend and then there was a stand still of cars. I couldn't help but thinking that a tornado touched down and ripped part of the freeway apart. Well, what happened was there was about a foot and a half of standing water ON THE FREEWAY just from the ten minutes of rain. ALL but one lane was covered in rain. WHEW! I was actually relieved that was all it was. So after about 25 minutes of shear terror things cleared up and then it was a beautiful night. We watched the news later and a tornado did actually touch down in St. Louis but it wasn't anything major. So now we can say we were in a tornado, which is pretty cool I guess.

We didn't really find anything else that tickled our fancy in St. Louis, so on Sunday we drove about 2 hours to Springfield, Illinois and saw Abraham Lincoln's home and also visited his tomb. It was really cool actually, but then again Jason and I are kinda history nerds. Our t0ur guide through his house was quite the odd duck, but none-the-less got the facts delivered. Lincoln's body was actually stolen and held for ransom early on so now they have this huge shrine for him and he is buried ten feet under ground in a cement vault. So don't go gettin' any ideas about stealin' his body for ransom! I really enjoy seeing how things were back then and just think how different life would have been back then. And I LOVE the old houses!I know. NERD! OH and I forgot to mention I got to touch the actual railing Lincoln touched (and of course all the other thousands of people that have visited there) I know.... you're jealous! The house had a lot of replica's since Lincoln sold most of his furniture and belongings cause they thought they were going to move back. So most of the things you see weren't the real deal except for the black horse hair upholstered couches and chairs, the candelabras and his desk and a few other things but I forgot. And, the lovely carpet and wallpaper you'll see in the pictures below were the actual colors and designs they had. WAY too busy for my taste! After, we drove back, took a late afternoon nap and then had yummy dinner at P.F. Changs :) So that's it. Our fun weekend in St. Louis!

So apparently I didn't get the good footage of driving in the blinding rain. But you can see that it was raining bad, so just imagine it being twice as bad and you can get the idea!