3-4-17  on to Knoxville:

It was a short St. Louis visit this time.  Only 4 full days.  But we packed alot into that.  I went swimming twice and volleyball once.  It sure was nice getting a chance to play volleyball again!  Ken visited a couple of his buddies who were in rehab centers right now.  We also made it to dinner with a couple we haven't dined with in years, as well as ate at Ken's brother's restaurant and had a nice visit with him, and went to dinner with Faith's dad and his new wife.  Lots of good eatin' and great visitin'!  We had thought about staying a couple more days, but decided to head to Knoxville on Sat. so we could spend Sat. night and all day Sunday visiting with Tim and Faith.  Another reason for wanting to go on this trip!
So we were off by about 8:30 am.  We had planned to meet up with David and Jane for breakfast in Mt. Vernon on our way through.  But just like last time, our plans were foiled by his foster kids.  Last time it was the run-a-way boy who he had to go to court about.  This time he was at the hospital with the new boy.  He's a large 18 year old senior in high school who thought it was a good idea to let a bully punch him to prove that he can take a punch.  The punch broke the kids jaw in 2 places and the stress caused his heart to have some problems.  He wasn't released in time for David and Jane to join us, so we stopped and had breakfast by ourselves, then continued on.
Here we are crossing over to Illinois on the newer I-70 bridge.  At least you don't have to go downtown to cross the river anymore.

 Another view of St. Louis from the new bridge.

2-28-17 a stroll through the Missouri Botanical Gardens:

One of the reasons I elected to go back to St. Louis was to go to the Orchid Show at the Missouri Botanical Gardens.  They have it every year from something like Jan.- the end of March.  I've gone to it many years.  We happened to be having a really warm winter this year, too, so I was looking forward to wandering around the gardens.  So I messaged my photography friend to see if she wanted to go, too.  She did, and we met today for lunch in the park and a stroll around the gardens as well as checking out the orchid display.
There was quite a few things blooming already!

 looking back towards the entrance building from the gardens.

 the daffodils were pretty much in full bloom.  Love them!

 a low growing ground flower.

 One of the areas of the garden has a yard of crocuses.  They happened to be in bloom now, too.

 the lawn of blooming crocuses and other low flowering plants.

 These looked like azaleas to me, but I'm sure the plaque by them called them some kind of rhodie.

 even some of the dried flowers from last year looked neat.

 and the dried leaves.

 Don't know what these are, but they were blooming nicely already.

 more flowers in the Japanese Garden.

 MOBOT has one of the nicest Japanese Gardens I've ever been in.

 looking towards the bridge where the koi like to hang out under.

 another Japanese statue.

 one of my year around favorite views in the Japanese Gardens.

 Getting ready for St. Patty's day.

 The Climatron where the rain forest is.

 one of the many sculptures throughout the garden.

By now we'd been here about 3 hours---although the first one was while we had lunch in the nice cafe in the gardens.  Now it was time to check out the orchid show.  Every year they have some sort of theme to the show.  This year it was vanilla.  Throughout the show were plaques with info on vanilla and a few vanilla plants.  Unfortunately, none of them were blooming today.

But there were lots of beautiful orchids to check out.

 love all the different colors they come in.

 and shapes.

 even green ones.

 an unusual one.

 even the leaves are interesting.

 so many different shapes and sizes of orchids.

 another green one with a different color lip.

 Don't know what kind this is, but it reminds me of a space ship.

 delicate white ones.

 bold orange ones.

 This was probably my favorite of the orchids this year.  Reminds me of a yellow heart.

 some day I'm going to have to get a macro lens so I can get crisper close ups.

 Never noticed before how some of the orchids look like faces!

 I liked these leopard looking ones, too.

 many have similar colored petals with different colored lips.

 a bit of a normal angle view.

 pretty in pink

 little white ones.

 there were even several kids there---home taught, I presume?  They seemed to enjoy the gardens, too.

 the whole orchid garden is very lush.

 When we were done with the orchids, we wandered around the gift shop.  They have a rather large gift shop with a lot of unusual things in it.  I really thought these were a clever idea.  I have some sea biscuits which I may have do this to.

We easily spent about 5 hours there.  It's things like this that make me miss St. Louis sometimes.  This and meeting up with lots of friends and Ken's family.