Please Knock Me Out Now

I've been on a long trip with the family. All nine of us packed into two vans. We drove to St. Louis and back. Forgive me in advance for the picture order. I don't know what blogger did to inhibit the moving around of pictures but they did and I don't have the patience to deal with it. I'm lucky to have actually gotten all these uploaded.
One thing that I really miss about "the north" is the fall colors.

We visited the arch in St. Louis, of course. That was fun. The girls had a good time with that.

We rode the Incline railway in Chattanooga, TN. That was interesting.

We walked about 2/3 of the way across the Walnut St. Bridge over the Tennessee river in Chattanooga. You can't see it but behind us was a wall of rain heading our way and we had to turn around and get back to the vans to escape the rain before we could get all the way across.

We visited the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, KY. I was disappointed that I couldn't take any pictures inside the museum itself. I was also disappointed that I was not able to purchase so much as a fat quarter while in the home of quilting in America. What's with that? I tried to go into Eleanor Burns' Quilt In a Day shop. There was a sign on the door that said "will be back at 1:30." It was after 2. Darn. Oh well. I bet it's more fun during the annual quilt show anyway. The quilts inside were simply beautiful though. Del and Dad were joking about how boring it was going to be but both were impressed with the museum. And that's sayin' something.

Lily enjoying the view from the arch in St. Louis. That's the Mississippi river below. Just in case you didn't know that.

I took a picture similar to this one when we were in St. Louis when Ella was 8 months old. It was just Del and Ella with the arch behind them.

We went to the St. Louis Science Center. That's fun!! Here I am holding a South American hissing cockroach. I almost died!

In Chattanooga we visited the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Park. It's a Civil War site. Very interesting! I really enjoy visiting history like that. Ella picked me a flower.

Here's the view from the mountain that the Union army had. That is the Tennessee river and Chattanooga below.

At the St. Louis zoo there was this cool drinking fountain. I was thoroughly impressed with the zoo. It's free to get in and you get up close to the animals. And they had a lot of really interesting animals and all were active. The worst part was that parking was $11 but you can park on the street for free. The zoo is located in Forest Park and there are tons of things to do there but we didn't have time to do anything other than the zoo.

Here's Ella snagging a red leaf at the zoo.

The whole reason we went to St. Louis was to visit Del's family. In the picture from left to right are: Aunt Brenda and Lily, Aunt Sandy, Uncle Reed, Granny, my mom and Great Aunt Vera. On the floor of course are me and Del, Anna, Rachel, Sarah, Ella and my dad. We saw a couple of cousins also but forgot to get a picture.

We also saw Del's nephew. Here is his daughter with Anna. Dariana was such a sweet girl. Her mom is expecting and she will be a great big sister!