Up up and away!

When we arrived at the Arch, I was so nervous...they make you stand in line, then you get a pass that tells you which door you get to go thru, we got door number 3, the doors are small and there are only 4 seats in the capsule that takes you up to the top. The structure is known as the "the Arch" and it is part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, the Gateway Arch stands as a monument to the west-ward expansion of the United States that occurred after Thomas Jefferson completed the Louisiana Purchase. It stands 630-feet high and 630-feet wide and the primary construction materials used to build it were steel and concrete and it is clad in stainless steel. The Gateway Arch rises high above the west bank of the Mississippi River and its both the tallest man made monument the United States and the tallest arch in the world. The view from the top is breathtaking! I highly recommend it..Lol..

After the arch we walked a couple of miles to the City Museum. It is located downtown and it is a playhouse consisting largely of repurposed architectural and industrial objects, it is a eclectic mixture of children's playground, funhouse, surrealistic pavilion, and architectural marvel.....what a place, its mostly for children, but with me being a kid at heart, Pierre had to drag me away after a couple of hours of climbing, playing, crawling thru mazes, sliding down slides, sitting in the bus which hangs out over the side of the building and riding the Farris wheel which is located on the roof. The City Museum has been named one of the great public spaces and has won other local and international awards as a must-see destination in St Louis. I think it was great!

Owensboro Kentucky then on to St Louis!

We flew thru Tennessee, only stopping at a rest area, so I have nothing to say about Tennessee this go around, I wanted to stop in Nashville, but we were kinda on a time crunch...so it off to Owensboro! We stayed in a very strange RV park called Windy Hollow. Now, there's not to many places to stay in Owensboro Kentucky. Windy Hollow was a pretty place to stay, there were 7 ponds so they have fishing and swimming. But no cell phone service nor WiFi....Pierre and I went walking around, not to many RV's or people!
In the morning we parted ways with Dick and Jane. They headed to visit family in Mattoon, Illinois so Pierre and I decided to go to St Louis. I found us a super sweet RV park in St Charles, its called Sundermeier RV Park. Its right next to the Missouri River, so you can walk along the levee and watch the river flow by.

St Charles is a suburb of St Louis. It is primarily French and was founded by a French man named Louis Blanchette, he called it Les Petites Cotes or The Little Hills.
We drove into St Louis to go to the arch and just poke around the city, oh what a day we had, so much fun. When we got to the Arch we found out you have to have reservations to go up in it, so we decided to go ahead and make them for the next day, on the walk back to the car we stopped to talk to a local man, he told us to go to Delmar Loop. Delmar Loop is a restaurant, entertainment and cultural district in University City. In 2007 it was named one of the 10 great streets in America. We had lunch in the duck room at Blueberry Hill, a restaurant and music club, Chuck Berry played there the third Wednesday of each month till 2014. After lunch we took a walk down the St Louis walk of fame, and met a wonderful man named Raven Wolf... he plays his sax on the sidewalk next to Blueberry hill. What a sweetheart! We spoke with him for awhile, he is headed to New Mexico next, he's a free spirit!

I was looking for some St Louis sticker so I went into a shop that sold t-shirts and such. Couldn't find any stickers anywhere so we drove over to Soulard Farmer Market... Pierre got a text (we are not sure from whom) that we really needed to see this farmers market....oh yea...

Walking back to the car I saw a small little local shop and went inside..still searching for stickers, no luck but the lady told me that there was a shop in Cherokee Landing called Stlye.
Now...Cherokee Landing is a hidden treasure in St Louis, spanning a couple miles down Cherokee Street there is antique, collectible and specialty shops, art galleries, restaurants and cafés. You can wander along the tree lined streets or visit the Lemp Mansion, 
home of the ill-fated beer barons and considered one of the most haunted houses in America.
We finally found Stlye (I got stickers!) and the owner told a little about Cherokee Landing , but he also gave a few more jems to visit in St Louis. 

Somewhere in the USofA

Traveling with my husband and our little cat 🐱 Navigator (Navi) is such fun! When we start off Navi runs the dash, protecting Esprit from all sorts of dangers (cat kind..of course) till he feels like the threat is over, then he falls asleep, all stretched out, up on the dashboard. 

We stopped in Montgomery Al. for the night and the trees were very close to the windshield and Navi could see the birds, they were mocking birds, now, size for size, I think these are the fiercest of all the small birds. They saw Navi in the window and preceded to fly from tree to tree teasing him, he ran the dash to and fro, chasing them...so 

Looking at the mocking birds

I put his harness on him and took him outside to extract his revenge! The park we stayed in was very clean and the landscaping was fantastic, talking to the owner we found 

out that he had a landscaping business before the RV park... mystery solved! Headed to Huntsville tomorrow to see the U.S. Space and Rocket Center. The center is a Smithsonian affiliated and the official visitor center for both NASA Marshall Space Fight Center and for the Tennessee Valley Authority

There is some neat stuff to see here in Huntsville, its a pretty cool city...we are staying up in the Monte Sano mountain, it is a State Park. I'm not so sure about all this, there are snakes, poison ivy, poison oak, and other such nasty stuff. I took Navi out for a walk and Dick came over 
and told me that he was playing in poison ivy, I ran him inside Esprit and washed him down...he sleeps with us...no poison ivy for me..Thank You! Pierre and I took a walk around the mountain on a trail 

This is the observation point

We found a path that pointed us to a Japanese Tea Garden. It was a wonderful walk around that!

The phone service up here is non existent..sketchy at best! We are going to spend a couple of days here because there's so much fun things to do and see around here!

We went to the Harmony Safari Park, you drive around and feed the animals from out the window...Jane almost made me pee my pants, I was laughing so hard at her....when an emu stuck his head in the window and Jane turned and was 
looking him in face...she nearly decapitated him trying to get the window up! Funny stuff peeps!

We are on the way to Owensboro Kentucky tomorrow!

Hitting the open road...

We are hitting the open road again... I am so excited because this is going to be the trip we planned when we bought Esprit. We have had some setbacks, but hopefully all the kinks have been worked out. We are driving up to South Bend, Indiana with our friends Dick and Jane... they have family there so Pierre and I are going to go to Chicago to the museums and see the sights and just hang around. This will be the furthest north I have ever traveled! I'm thrilled about it! We will meet back up the Dick and Jane, cross the boarder into Canada and drive all the way over to Nova Scotia, down the East coast and back to Georgia. From there we are planning to head to California, slowly, as to avoid the winter. When we get to California we are going to travel up the coast to Alaska! Wish us luck...will keep everyone posted.

Savannah Georgia

We went to Savanna with our neighbors Dick and Jane, we left Panama City and we are going to spend the night in Valdosta, never been there so I am going to look up some interesting tidbit about Valdosta! 

Valdosta is a city located on the southern border of Georgia, and is the 14th largest city in Georgia, wow who knew that? It is called the Azalea City, as the azalea plant grow very well there along with cotton and tobacco because it has virtually a flat landscape. Valdosta is also called the "Naval Stores Capital of the World" because it supplies 80% of the world demand for naval stores. When we got there the car would start so we had to work on that most of the afternoon so we didn't go see any of Valdosta...oh well...onward  to Savannah! 

valdosta

evening in Valdosda

Savannah is just loaded with history, it was one of the original 13 colony's and it is the oldest city in Georgia. Since it is perched right on the Savannah River this made it a very strategic seaport durning the American Revolution and the Civil War. Today Savannah has a huge industrial center and it ranks as one of the top seaports in the United States. Savannah is also a big tourist attraction, attracting millions of visitors to its cobblestone streets, parks, and historic buildings.

Savannah's downtown area, which includes the Savannah Historic Districts , the Savannah Victorian District, they also have 22 parks and one of the largest National Historical Landmark Districts in the United States.

this is the park were Forest Gump was filmed

It is the birthplace of Juliette Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts, the Georgia Historical District (the oldest continually operating historical society in the South), theTelfair Academy of Arts and Sciences (one of the South's first public museums), and it also retains the original town plan determined by founder James Oglethorpe (a design now known as the Oglethorpe Plan). Savannah was also the host city for the sailing competitions in the 1996 summer Olympics held in Atlanta becouse of this the city of Savannah was awarded a bronze statue, that sits in the Waving Girl Park, next to the river. 

The Waving Girl (Florence Marcus) was one of my favorite stories, she was a young girl that lived on Elba Island with her brother, the light house keeper. She kept house for her brother and one day while shaking the rugs she was greeted with waves and calls from a passing ship, that started a 44 year of waving, white handkerchief by day and lanterns by night to passing ships! The sailors would tell tales of her at different ports around the world and she became a beacon of hope for many sea-wary travelers. James Mack Adams, writing for the Savannah Morning News in 1998, believed that she was a reminder of what awaited many seamen when they finally returned to shore:

Lonely sailors strained their eyes to look for her. They called her the ‘sweetheart of seafaring men of the world.’ She represented the wives and sweethearts they had left on distant shores. Sweet..Right!  

Tybee Island is a barrier island off the coast of Savannah, it is known for it wide sandy beaches and is a popular tourist site for people looking for some fun in the sun. It has a still functioning 18th century Lighthouse!

Did you know that Tybee Island is one of the few locations where the Air Force dropped an atomic bomb...by accident..(it happened during a training exercise that went bad) although the bomb did not detonate, they never found the Mark 15 nuclear bomb! Ummm...

We took a day out and drove over to the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge..that place is LOADED with alligators!

enjoying the rays 

Not to far away is South Carolina, as the Savannah River is the border between Georgia and South Carolina, so of course we had to go to Hilton Head. Hilton Head is an island named after Captain William Hilton, who in 1663 found the island, which he named "Hilton's Head" after himself. The island features miles of Atlantic Ocean beachfront and it is a popular vacation destination, along with great golf courses. Here's a fun little fact.....it is known to have the worlds most aggressive great white shark population!

going into Hilton Head

Savannah also has a beautiful botanical garden..Coastal Georgia Botanical Garden..Miles and miles of gardens, they have a bamboo maze, a orchid greenhouse garden, so we wandered around and enjoyed some beautiful gardens and tons of wildlife!

bamboo

wildlife!

  

We stayed at a fun RV park in Rincon... about 10 minutes out of Savannah, they had a small man-made tank on the property. Navi had a great time with the ducks that lived there, we went out every morning and evening to see them and feed them some bread. They soon found out what RV we were coming from and they were waiting in front of the rv each morning and evening!  

bottoms up!

Canadian Geese

Navi watching the ducks and geese

We're home now...new travels to come!