Day 67 – My sister, Gayle, lives in a city outside St. Louis and we’d arranged for her to come to the campground to see the RV and meet the cats. It was around 30 minutes depending on traffic from her home to ours. She’d taken the day off from work so we had the entire day to visit with her, and it was very nice. She looked great and it was wonderful to see her.
We hung out at the RV for a bit, then we followed her car to her condo. We met Jake, her great dog, and hung out at the condo until hunger drove us to find a lunch spot as part of our tour of the area. Her condo is very nice and has a wonderful, homey feel about it. Jake is a good dog who obviously adores Gayle. She has taught him to use her treadmill as part of his exercise program and we took pictures of this and a video. Really cute.
Jake exercising
Gayle drove, we left our car at her house, and we went to check out the beautifully restored historic district in St. Charles, MO. There’s free parking & Main Street borders the Missouri River; you can walk for blocks and look at historic buildings & cute stores, cobblestone streets & old mills – very nice. This is the place where Lewis & Clark began their journey to the west coast; it is Missouri’s first State capital, and the land of Davy Crockett & Daniel Boone.
We stopped for lunch at “The Mother-in-Law House Restaurant” on historic Main Street, which was built in 1866. It was the first brick duplex west of the Mississippi, and the house is on the National Register. The restaurant was lovely and the food & service were quite good. If we’d been staying longer, we would have gone back for dinner. We walked some more, then headed back near the Missouri River to where we parked Gayle’s car.
We drove to downtown St. Louis for a tour & took pictures by car – we were nearing time for people to get off work and the traffic was heavy. Drove back to Gayle’s house to visit Jake and kick back to watch last night’s Rachel Maddow – Rob & I have not watched any TV since we left home and had been completely out of the loop. My how stressful things have become! Better off without a TV, but it was certainly refreshing to watch Rachel again.
We were getting hungry & Gayle came up with a wonderful idea; we didn’t want to eat a huge meal nor spend a lot, so we went to a great seafood restaurant, Bristol Seafood Grille, at the Hilton in O’Fallon, MO. We sat at a booth in the bar where from 4 to 6 p.m., the drinks were discounted and you could be served incredible bar food (large appetizer servings) at very low prices. There were fresh oysters, fried calamari, fish tacos, fantastic shrimp scampi, lobster claws & great drinks. They came by with free warm rolls with honey butter on a regular basis. People-watching was great, too, as folks got off work & began to celebrate the weekend. We had a good time and left with full bellies and still had money in our wallets. Our next time in the area, we’d definitely come back here. We’d taken two cars to the restaurant & we made plans to meet up tomorrow around noon. Thank you, Gayle, for taking time off to show us around and spend the day with us; it was great!