When I first started stewing over this road trip we just took, I didn't really think about visiting St. Louis. My mom's family lives in southern Illinois and I had friends I wanted to visit in Kansas and SW Missouri. St. Louis was just a place I was asking, do we drive through or do we bypass?
Suddenly I remembered that Lewis and Clark and the Corp of Discovery embarked from the St. Louis area and surely there would be sites there I would be interested to see. As I began to look into it, I realized I didn't want to just drive through, I wanted to stop and see. I also learned that many museums and the zoo in St. Louis have free admission. These pictures are from our zoo day:
A rainy day did not dampen our enjoyment of this great zoo. It really is an excellent collection of animals. Plus they had many animals we cannot have in Miami.
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| Irene sees her faves! |
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| The reptile house was incredible! |
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| I loved the butterfly house. |
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| I did not expect to see a grizzly bear - I counted this as a Lewis and Clark related siting! |
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| We were all impressed (and thoroughally chilled) by the penguin exhibit. |
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| The polar bear was on our bucket list. |
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| Turtle Park |
I had a tip from an Illinois cousin that although the zoo has free admission, the parking is kind of expensive. She advised me where I could find free parking, that ended up being next to the Turtle Park, which is a park full of GIANT concrete turtles - one of each kind native to Missouri.
More to come...eventually :)
