Monday, February 28, 2011
Sunday, February 27, 2011
St Louis!
Hmm... Seems it's been a while since we posted here. We want to try again!
So... we made it to St Louis! Friday night, we left 3 hours later than we intended, stopped at Subway on our way out of town and still made it to our hotel room in Berea, KY by 1am. We stayed at the historic Boone Tavern which is run by college students who work there as part of the college's work study program to help pay college expenses. We learned (quickly!) to ask for a room that wasn't under the ice machine and then quickly dozed off to sleep.
On Saturday morning, looked around at some of the shops and galleries in Berea. The college has many art programs and the town has many artsy folks living there and running galleries. We think Robyn & Joe would enjoy checking out this town. Shortly after lunch, we hit the road to drive on to our next waypoint. We enjoyed seeing the large horse farms along the interstate near Lexington, KY. Then we took a short side trip to see something Bernard had been looking forward to... we drove around UPS Worldport. Look it up online... it is fascinating. There are no tours of the inside but it is enormous to look at from the outside. After our short self-guided tour of the outside, we drove on to New Harmony, Indiana.
New Harmony is pretty cool. The town has just over 900 residents and there are multiple conservation efforts under way to protect and restore parts of the town. We had a lovely dinner at the Red Geranium restaurant before going to sleep a little earlier. Sunday was a bit chilly for walking around town so we did some driving and some walking. Any tour of New Harmony should start at the Atheneum, a very modern, award-winning 60's structure on the shore of the Wabash River. The Wabash swollen today with the riverside path partially submerged. We viewed town from the roof of the Atheneum, viewed the marvelous 80's video about the town and studied a large model of the early town before going out on our own to explore. After a good look around, we started looking for lunch and found that there's not a lot to choose from on Sunday. We were fortunate that the woman at the coffee shop was happy to see some customers and was willing to stay open a little late in order to feed us some really nice tomato soup, garlic bread (chunks of garlic baked into the bread) and (for me) a warm spicy chai made by the owner's sister.
Life on the road does bring it's moments of excitement. On the way to New Harmony, we passed an accident that had just happened. Bernard quickly pulled off the road and went to help while I called 911 and tried to figure out how to describe where we were. Fortunately, no one was injured but we found a very sad man who had his homemade travel trailer out for it's first drive when the wind caught it and sent it flying into the median. I called back 911 to give the update that no one was injured and I'd found a sign to give a better location. They assured us that a state trooper was on the way so we gave the man a flashlight and left him with the other person who'd stopped to help.
Tonight, we're having a new experience (and by the time you read this, there will be nothing to worry about). There is a tornado warning in effect for the area of Missouri that we're in. The summary on the news is that a "watch" means to be aware and a "warning" means take cover. The power in our hotel flickered, the cable TV went out and then the power went out. *Then* we started hearing some loud crackling sounds above the skylight in our room. We were both thinking power line issues when it occurred to me that they'd predicted hail as well. We have now collected our laptops, pants and shoes beside the bed in case we need to move from here but we are in the center of the building away from all windows so we are as safe as we can be. Bernard has a new toy, a handheld scanner for listening to police frequencies, etc. He wanted it to listen to transmissions related to the space ship launch we're planning to go see but was pretty happy to be bringing it on this trip too. He's just picked up a transmission asking for someone to attend to a guy who cut his arm breaking into a vacant apartment because he was afraid of "the tornado"… eeks. I think we'll just go to sleep now. The storm noise is much quieter and there's nothing more we can do!
Good news from the scanner… the tornado warning for our area has just been canceled so we're definitely going to sleep.
Love to all!
So... we made it to St Louis! Friday night, we left 3 hours later than we intended, stopped at Subway on our way out of town and still made it to our hotel room in Berea, KY by 1am. We stayed at the historic Boone Tavern which is run by college students who work there as part of the college's work study program to help pay college expenses. We learned (quickly!) to ask for a room that wasn't under the ice machine and then quickly dozed off to sleep.
On Saturday morning, looked around at some of the shops and galleries in Berea. The college has many art programs and the town has many artsy folks living there and running galleries. We think Robyn & Joe would enjoy checking out this town. Shortly after lunch, we hit the road to drive on to our next waypoint. We enjoyed seeing the large horse farms along the interstate near Lexington, KY. Then we took a short side trip to see something Bernard had been looking forward to... we drove around UPS Worldport. Look it up online... it is fascinating. There are no tours of the inside but it is enormous to look at from the outside. After our short self-guided tour of the outside, we drove on to New Harmony, Indiana.
New Harmony is pretty cool. The town has just over 900 residents and there are multiple conservation efforts under way to protect and restore parts of the town. We had a lovely dinner at the Red Geranium restaurant before going to sleep a little earlier. Sunday was a bit chilly for walking around town so we did some driving and some walking. Any tour of New Harmony should start at the Atheneum, a very modern, award-winning 60's structure on the shore of the Wabash River. The Wabash swollen today with the riverside path partially submerged. We viewed town from the roof of the Atheneum, viewed the marvelous 80's video about the town and studied a large model of the early town before going out on our own to explore. After a good look around, we started looking for lunch and found that there's not a lot to choose from on Sunday. We were fortunate that the woman at the coffee shop was happy to see some customers and was willing to stay open a little late in order to feed us some really nice tomato soup, garlic bread (chunks of garlic baked into the bread) and (for me) a warm spicy chai made by the owner's sister.
Life on the road does bring it's moments of excitement. On the way to New Harmony, we passed an accident that had just happened. Bernard quickly pulled off the road and went to help while I called 911 and tried to figure out how to describe where we were. Fortunately, no one was injured but we found a very sad man who had his homemade travel trailer out for it's first drive when the wind caught it and sent it flying into the median. I called back 911 to give the update that no one was injured and I'd found a sign to give a better location. They assured us that a state trooper was on the way so we gave the man a flashlight and left him with the other person who'd stopped to help.
Tonight, we're having a new experience (and by the time you read this, there will be nothing to worry about). There is a tornado warning in effect for the area of Missouri that we're in. The summary on the news is that a "watch" means to be aware and a "warning" means take cover. The power in our hotel flickered, the cable TV went out and then the power went out. *Then* we started hearing some loud crackling sounds above the skylight in our room. We were both thinking power line issues when it occurred to me that they'd predicted hail as well. We have now collected our laptops, pants and shoes beside the bed in case we need to move from here but we are in the center of the building away from all windows so we are as safe as we can be. Bernard has a new toy, a handheld scanner for listening to police frequencies, etc. He wanted it to listen to transmissions related to the space ship launch we're planning to go see but was pretty happy to be bringing it on this trip too. He's just picked up a transmission asking for someone to attend to a guy who cut his arm breaking into a vacant apartment because he was afraid of "the tornado"… eeks. I think we'll just go to sleep now. The storm noise is much quieter and there's nothing more we can do!
Good news from the scanner… the tornado warning for our area has just been canceled so we're definitely going to sleep.
Love to all!
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