Each journey begins with a single step... Two kiwis escaping from the island to explore strange new worlds and boldly go where thousands have gone before... . .

It was a late arrival time in St Louis, we were picked up at 10.45pm by Ben (Dawn's youngest son) and (surprise?) Dawn, Carol's sister. Dawn had mentioned to us that she would try to get here while we were here but then she forgot that and was wondering why we weren't surprised! A quick trip to Ben and Denae's home in Ben's lovely old Mercedes Benz which runs on vege oil. At home we found Alan, Taj, Rocksie (the dog), their cat (oops forgot it's name),Ninja (visiting moggy), we had our own little marae going on.
Since we were up so late we took the opportunity to make some calls to NZ, with all the time zone changes it gets difficult to remember how far behind/ahead NZ is.
8 Sept  - Monday
We all went to have lunch at a local Mexican restaurant, Aaron (Dawn's eldest son) joined us as did Fawn and Dennis (Denae's parents). It was really great to see them, they visited us in Rotorua in March this year. Dawn and Alan then had to head off to the airport to fly back to Houston and home to Galveston (an island nearby) and at the same time Denae was arriving at the airport from Florida. It was a busy day and in the evening we just vegetated in front of the box each with a laptop tapping away. Ben snuck out and got us a treat of frozen custard, looks like snow freeze but is custard and YUMMY!!!!!
9 Sept  - Tuesday
Denae took us on a road trip around St Louis and we got to see some beautiful homes and a cool building which the owner had turned into a playground for kids and adults (see the pic of the building with the bus on the top). It is full of stuff you can crawl over and through, unfortunately for us it was closed so we could only imagine. Thai for lunch, cheesecake for aftenoon munchies from the Italian quarter, a stroll through the park, then to Dennis's work. Don't know what Dennis does, his office in a den/museum here he conducts business for Du Pont with his feet up and toy trains running around. His PA has a major in train resiting after derailments. Haha, no really Dennis (does work for Du Pont) was the chief instigator of the Hot Hues line of Du Pont paints and is well known in Hotrod and car racing circles.
In the evening Dennis and Fawn took us out to dinner in the Italian quarter which is called 'On The Hill' and has Italian flags flying on the lamposts and the fire hydrants are patriotic too. We had the most wonderful meal there, Kent had veal which arrived on one plate with a second full of spaghetti and sauce and a glass of red wine, Carol had Tortellini Bianco a big plate of pasta with the most delicious side salad ever made. One of the apetizers was bread with cheese melted on the top and it was wonderful cheese, Carol thought she had died and gone to heaven. With our stomachs needing wheelbarrows and clutching doggy bags we left the restaurant and stopped at Ted Drewes another local frozen custard spot. How, you may ask, did we manage to fit anything else in? Well you have heard the story about the bucket and the rocks, stones and sand... this was the sand. Now frozen custard is a St Louis special and there they call it 'Concrete', Ben demonstrated for us the reason why they call it concrete. He turned his pottle upside down and said 'see' whereupon the custard fell out of the pottle and hit the deck! Carol laughed until she cried, Fawn was concerned that she might have to clean the car, Denae wished she had the camera out and none of us know whether or not he got to eat any of it at all!
We all went back to Dennis and Fawns home and Dennis showed us the extension of his office downtown which is in the basement of his home and consists of two rooms. One room is full of display cases with old and new models of cars, trains, tractors etc. an excellent collection. The second room houses two train layouts and a slot car track, more model everythings including planes and helicopters. Luke, you would be in heaven here. This guy is amazing, we nicknamed him 'the Finder'.