Brazos Bend State Park

This park is located southwest of Houston, and is considered "a nature lover's paradise".  My brother Jared wanted to hike it with us, but the park was closed over the week-end because rain covered many of its trails.  Unfortunately Jared and his wife had plans for floors in their house to be laid on Monday and Tuesday so they did not accompany us.  They have been to the park before and love to hike its trails.  Until the 1980s this park was ranch land, and after the owners left it was being considered for development.  Fortuitously, a heavy rain proved the land not possible for such use and it was instead sold to the state.  How fortunate for us, we had a wonderful day in the park and saw lots of wildlife.

 

As we entered the park we saw signs warning us that venomous snakes were present in the park.  We did stop in the nature center of the park where we were able to see those snakes and identify them.  Two of them happened to cross our path during the course of the day.  Pictured above is a cottonmouth, or water moccasin.  We also saw a southern copperhead, it passed right under my feet.

There are woodlands in the park to hike in, and also wetlands.  We walked along several small lakes in the park and saw many alligators.  The park claims to have 300 of them and warns the public to stay at least 30 feet from them.  As you can see, John is closer than that to the alligator pictured above.  There were also places along our trail where they were on both sides of us and we just had to walk between them.  One time I was so engrossed in taking pictures of water birds that I almost stepped on the snout of an alligator, fortunately John stopped me in time.

And the park was so alive with the sounds of birds!  We heard the characteristic sound of many phoebes, as well as the loud deep hoot of an owl.  Egrets and herons would occasionally let out a loud and raucous call as they took flight when humans disturbed them.   We saw many little white egrets as as little blue herons and a variety of ducks.   One black-crowned night heron, pictured below, was so intent on his search for food that he totally ignored our presence.  The park has a variety of habitats which provides a home for over 300 species of birds, a great place for bird watching.

I think we hiked at least 4 miles over the course of our day in the park.  Having been sedentary for so long we could not get enough of walking!  In fact, when we thought we were done and the sun was starting to set, we got the crazy idea that we wanted to see the Brazos River which runs along one side of the park.  We found a trail which took us there and added another half mile to our day.  On our way out of the park we saw six deer feeding in a meadow.  A perfect ending to our day!

On the Road Again

Hard to believe that it has almost been a week since we left the St.Louis area.  We took a straight shot down highway 55 out of Missouri, into Arkansas and then Louisiana.  Maybe you are wondering about the last state, and I also questioned John about that.  Well, he wanted to go on a different road and claimed that it would only take us a few miles out of our way.  It was interesting being back in Louisiana, and this was the first time I think that we did not use our campground catalogs in finding a place to park our rig.  Large signs along the highway directed us to the Riverbend rv park.

We were in the Bible belt of the south, and this park had a beauty saloon.  The next day before we left I wandered around in the park and found the river, alongside of which were large live oaks and Spanish moss.  Other than dealing with the acorns which fell on our home, it was a good stop.

After the cool temperatures of  St.Louis, we were looking forward to the warm climate of Texas.  On the third day we arrived in Dickinson, Texas (where my brother Jared and his wife Sherry live).  Well, we got our warmer temperatures but had to deal with a week-end of heavy rain.  My brother figures the area received a soaking of at least 20 inches in two days.  Water filled the ditches and came up fairly close to many homes, as pictured above.  At least our home was parked on high ground.

We have heard about green parrots being in this area.  To our delight they were flying around our home on
Sunday afternoon, about two dozen of them.  Later that day the sun finally came out and we saw a double rainbow.  Monday was a dry sunny day and we hiked in Brazos Bend State Park, more on that in the next posting.  In some places of the park a high mature forest canopy of live oaks and hardwoods reach for the sky.  Pictured below is one of the trails which we followed in the park.

A Home in Ebsworth Park

One last posting from St. Louis.  We certainly had a typical cool fall day when we visited this house last Saturday.  And to clarify where Ebsworth Park is located, especially for those of you who live in St.Louis and never have heard of the park, it can be found in the Sugar Creek Valley of Kirkwood.  It is a county park which comprises the home and grounds of Russel and Ruth Kraus.   Their home, completed in 1955, was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.  It is one of 60 Usonian homes designed by the architect during the period of time (around 1936 onward) when the American economy was taking a downturn and there was a demand for middle-income family homes.

I at first, with camera in hand, wandered around the home looking for the front part of it.  Silly me, I should have remembered from visiting other Frank Llloyd Wright homes, that there usually is not an obvious front entrance.  Pictured above is the main entrance, and where we entered the building to begin our guided tour.  Before we entered the house our tour guide pointed out the bricks, which are in the shape of parallelograms.  They had to be specially made, and the only company who was willing to do it in the 1950s was a brick company in Alton, Illinois. At that time there was also only one contractor willing to take on the construction of the home.  The home is pictured below, perhaps you can get a general idea of how it looks on the outside.  It does look like a typical  F.L.Wright house, you may remember that his buildings have an emphasis on horizontal lines.  It was the best shot I could get of the outside.

John thinks that it is somewhat in the shape of a trapezoid.  I do not remember much from my high school geometry class, but there is some kind of a connection between parallelograms, trapezoids, hexagons and triangles.  Oh, throw in right angles while you are contemplating them!  Pictured below is the patio area, which encompasses the front entrance.

Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures inside of the house, but all of the geometric shapes mentioned above are continued inside; in the walls and ceilings, book shelves and furniture.  The later are original to the home and designed by F.L.Wright.  There are two bedrooms in the home, in one bedroom the bed is hexagonal and in the master bedroom the bed is in the shape of a trapezoid. They had to be custom made.  If Russel and Ruth Kraus had children (which they did not) I am sure they would have aced their geometry classes!  As we were exiting the house John, ever the practical one, expressed concern that there no gutters.  Oops, that would not have been a F.L Wright house if there were gutters.  His buildings are all about artistic design, not practicality.  The house in the early years also did not have central air conditioning.  Wright's advice to Mr. and Mrs. Kraus was to open up the doors and windows.  Maybe he never lived in Missouri during the summer!

Touring Around Missouri

It has certainly become cooler now here in St.Louis, but for a variety  of reasons beyond our control, we will still continue to reside here.  Hopefully we will be heading south in another week.

Last week we rode on our bikes over the Creve Coeur Connector path which crosses the Missouri River.  The bridge, called the Page Avenue/364 bridge, connects the Katy Trail on the west end to the southwest corner of Creve Coeur Park.  There is an section of that bridge which has a variety of locks hanging from it.  This practice of hanging the locks and throwing away the key symbolizes unbroken love.  Names and wedding dates are on the locks.  It started during World War 1 in many cities around the world.   Leaders of some of those cities consider it an act of vandalism and have removed the locks, especially when their combined weight starts damaging the fence from which they are hanging. 

Saturday we made a trip down to Farmington, Missouri for John's high school reunion (class of 1959).  The leaves of some trees are now starting to turn, pictured above is a red maple tree which became flaming red with the sun setting on it.  The tree is located in the front yard of Carolyn's home.  She is John's sister who resides in Farmington.

Yesterday, Sunday, we made a trip down to Perry County, located in the southeastern corner of Missouri.  Pictured above is Trinity Lutheran church, built in 1867.  In 1839 700 Saxon Lutherans settled in the county and formed the parishes of Wittenberg, Dresden, Seelitz, Altenberg, and Frohna.  Trinity Church is located in the town of Altenberg.  We found the altar to be quite unusual with the pulpit located above it.

 

After spending some time at the museum in Altenberg we discovered that our day was about shot and there was no time to look at the other Lutheran historical sights in Perry County.  However, we did drive over to the river to see if there was a marker for the landing site of the Saxon Lutherans.  Unfortunately it would have been a difficult climb down to that site at the river's edge. While exploring the area we happened to see the Tower Rock,  a mass of limestone arising 85 feet out of the Mississippi River.  In 1696 Catholic missionaries planted a cross on that island.  In 1803 Lewis and Clark passed by this section of the river,  Lewis found the rock so interesting that he wrote about it in his journal. 

Faust Historical Village

This village is located in Faust Park.  The park was created by Leicester and Mary Plant Faust in 1968 with the intention to preserve the Thornhill house.  The Faust estate, now the home of the Community Music School of Webster Groves, is also on the grounds of the park.   An interesting side note here, Leicester Faust was the grandson of Adolphus Busch, founder of the Anheuser-Busch Brewery.

The Thornhill house, pictured above, was built from 1815-1820.  Frederick Bates was appointed Territorial Secretary of the new Louisiana Territory by President Thomas Jefferson in the early 1800s.  He was later, from 1824-25 Missouri's second governor.  In 1819, at the age of 41, Frederick Bates married his sixteen year-old neighbor from back home in Virginia.  They settled here at Thornhill and raised four children.  Unfortunately the house was not open for us to tour, but we still enjoyed walking around the estate and looking at the original out-buildings which include several barns, a distillery for the peach brandy they made, smokehouse and a corn granary.  There is also a small peach orchard and maple grove.

In another area of the park is the historic village which have homes built between 1840-1919.  They have been moved to the park from various areas of St.Louis County.  They vary from modest homes of immigrants to two-story more sophisticated buildings owned by established landowners.  A German immigrant and brick maker, Henry Hoch, built the above home in 1876.  Part of the rear is a wood framed structure.  Besides four rebuilt homes, the village also has a schoolhouse, carriage house, barn,, a mercantile, and a blacksmith shop.  Outside some of the buildings are various artifacts from the 1800s, as the dog mill for churning butter, which is pictured below.  A sign near this mill notes that the settlers used dogs for a variety of chores, besides churning butter dogs were also useful for turning the fireside spits.

Another interesting artifact which we saw in a barn was a guillotine, invented by Dr.Joseph Guillotin in 1792.  It was widely used during the French Revolution, and considered  more humane than drawing and quartering people!  Dr. Guillotin was part of a small reform group to abolish the death penalty.

We had a beautiful fall day for touring the park.  Mother Nature is still pretty with her colorful leaves which are now changing their colors, and many flowers are still in bloom as a frost has not happened as yet here in Missouri.  The trees pictured above have red berries on them, not cherry blossoms- wrong season for that!
Time for us to head south, but that will not be possible for a couple more weeks.

A Day in Forest Park

Pardon me if I take this opportunity to post another picture of our grandson.  Last week we had a wonderful time with Nathan and his mother, and being in a small motor home with a toddler is no problem at all!  He adjusted well, as long as we let him have the run of the place.  He certainly was not willing to let us have our space, how quickly he learned to hop on our bed when it came to bedtime reading!

My sister Gloria also came to town from Nebraska.  Last Tuesday we had a wonderful end-of-summer cool day to spend in Forest Park.  John and I had not seen the new East Building of the Saint Louis Art Museum, which had been built in 2013.  That part of the museum has the contemporary art exhibits.  We enjoyed that immensely- I am slowly beginning to appreciate modern art!  Of special interest to me were the paintings by German artists after WW11.  True, they are dark and foreboding, but they certainly express the mood of that country after the Third Reich had fallen.

The Museum now has an outdoor sculpture garden which showcases modern and contemporary sculpture.  Pictured above is Stone Sea done by Andy Goldsworth in 2012.  The 25 stone arches, each measuring 10 feet high, are made from Missouri limestone.  The artist employed ancient Roman dry stone engineering when building this inspiration taken from the geology history of St.Louis.

My sister Gloria  posed in front of another modern sculpture called "Phrygian Cap".   Alexander Calder is the pioneer of hanging kinetic sculptures known as mobiles.  He also made stationary works called "stabiles", which sit on the ground.  A Phrygian Cap sits atop the sculpture, it was a style of hat that was a symbol of liberty during the French Revolution of 1789.

After a wonderful lunch at the Boathouse Restaurant Forest Park, we headed over to the St.Louis Zoo.  The first place we stopped there was the Children's Zoo.  At the entrance to that section of the zoo we saw a beautiful plant with yellow flowers.  An employee of the zoo informed us that it is a Mexican popcorn plant, and encouraged us to rub the leaves.  We did and it smells just like buttered popcorn!   A first for us at the Children's Zoo was a tree kangaroo, pictured below.  It was getting to be late in the afternoon by the time we arrived at the zoo, consequently we had to call it a day.  All I can say is that both the art museum as well as the zoo continue to pleasantly surprise us- they are attractions which St.Louis can be proud of!

Calhoun County- 2015

It has been at least several years since we have made a fall trip to this part of Illinois.  Melissa, our daughter, wanted her son Nathan to experience apple picking so it was important to make the trip.  It was also fun for John and I now to visit the orchards with a grandson!  From where we are parked in St.Charles it is just a matter of driving a short distance and crossing the Mississippi River and Illinois River by ferry.

Just as we drove up to the Golden Eagle landing we saw a truck with large logs driving off the ferry.  That was a first for us, over the many years we have taken the ferry, we never saw a logging truck.  The ferries can certainly take a lot of weight.  The sign above lets us know that once we are on the ferry we are crossing into "scenic Calhoun County Illinois".

It was a bit of an overcast day with spot showers.  However, the picture above should give you an idea of the beauty of Calhoun County with its rolling river hills.  It is all farmland and pastures.

The best place for apple picking with a toddler is Eckert's orchards.  The place has certainly grown since we were there with our children.  Now there are kiddie rides as well as a petting zoo.  In the latter area is a miniature Zebu cow, the sacred cow of India.  Also called a Brahman cow, it is the only cow with a hump.   It differs from other non-hump cattle in that it has looser and tougher skin, as well as fine short hair.

 

It took a bit of convincing from us to stop Nathan from picking up rotten apple from the ground.  He soon realized that there were apples at his height to pick.  His mama was also at the ready to snap a picture of his first picking.  Our day ended at the Fin Inn restaurant in Grafton, Illinois.  It is a restaurant with four 2,000 gallon tank aquariums containing a variety of fish and turtles.  There is table-side viewing of the tanks. It is a bit disconcerting to be eating their kin while they are staring at you, but at least they entertained Nathan for a brief period of time.

Popeye Picnic Festival

We have not seen everything here in southern Illinois!  When we heard that there was to be a Popeye festival in Chester this past week-end, we knew we had to be there.  Our curiosity got the better of us- will the festival celebrate Popeye or spinach?  Maybe there will be some new culinary delight like fried spinach on a stick?

First, a little information on Chester.  It is a small river town, Mark Twain stopped here when he was a riverboat captain on the Mississippi.  John and I have driven through it occasionally on our way to St.Louis.  During the week it is a busy town with coal barges plying there way downriver, grain and delivery trucks passing through the main street of town.  The Gilster Mary Lee Corporation is pictured above.  It is a food manufacturing company of 8,000 different items under nearly 500 different private labels.  Daily they have fleets of trucks driving out of Chester to all parts of the nation.  Chester is also the birthplace of Elzie Crisler Segar (1868-1947).  He created the cartoon character Popeye.  We got to Chester about an hour before the Popeye Picnic Parade, so we had time to check out the Popeye Souvenir Store and Museum.

The cartoon strip started out under the name of Thimble Theater in 1929, it was later changed to Popeye.  Pictured above are some of the other characters which debuted at other times.  The rest are pictured below.

You may notice the can of spinach above, it was something which Popeye claimed gave him muscles.  During the 1930s there was an increased intake of spinach!  And by the way, the character of Popeye reportedly was likened to a citizen  of Chester who apparently was good with his fists.

As we walked around downtown Chester we saw a few statues of the characters of the Popeye cartoon.  Pictured above is Bluto, he and Popeye were often exchanging blows.

It was a good parade, as small town parades go.  All the local schools and their bands were represented, as well as the two political parties.  Speaking of the latter, one school float promoted Olive Oyl as First Lady.  Popeye is representing the Green Party.  He has promised a can of spinach in every cabinet.  Really, we can not do much worse than him, considering the candidates who are currently promoting themselves for president in 2016! 

Our grandson Nathan thoroughly enjoyed the parade, he was all eyes anxiously awaiting to see what would be coming down the street next.  And he made out like a bandit with a wide array of goodies tossed to him- besides candy he got stuffed animals and balls.  The other highlight for him was the petting zoo, where he met an alpaca for the first time.   If you are ever in southern Illinois about this time in September next year, do check out the Popeye Picnic Festival in Chester!  And no, I never did find any spinach delicacy at the picnic.

Stillwater, Minnesota

Yes, I have been a bit delinquent on writing, we were in Stillwater a week ago.  Now we are in Carbondale, and there has not been a free moment since we have arrived here.  Our grandson Nathan is 18 months old, very active and too cute to ignore for very long!

We visited Stillwater with our niece Kathy, husband Doug and their three children.  The town was settled in1843 at the site where the St.Croix River widens into Lake St.Croix.  We climbed a steep bluff which overlooks the town and river, and it was at the top of that hill where I took the above picture.   The town is in the Minneapolis-St.Paul vicinity, and just over the border from Wisconsin. 

Kathy and Doug's children are still at the age when they enjoy a good playground.  Teddy Bear Park is a delightful playground with several other teddy bear statues, also a sand lot and rock wall to climb.

We spent some time walking around the historic section of Stillwater and noticed, by reading historic markers on some of the older buildings, that the town was where a convention was held in 1848 to organize Minnesota as a  territory.  We passed on going to the Minnesota state fair for this trip to Stillwater, so decided that we were justified in indulging in some of the treats this town has to offer.  After a visit to an ice parlor, we visited a popcorn and candy store.  A statue of Linus was outside of the candy store, the words under him say "Life is like a Bowl of Chocolate".  Charles Schulz, cartoonist of Peanuts and the charactor Linus, was born in Minneapolis and grew up in St.Paul.   John and I had also seen another statue of Linus in the little town of Sleepy Eye, Minnesota the day before.   We will be in Carbondale for another week, then on to St.Louis.  Not sure when or where the next posting will be, just stay tuned!

 

Pipestone Prairie

As usual, we did not fully know what we were going to see when visited Pipestone National Monument.  I thought it would be some memorial of a pile of rocks,  certainly not expecting to see 50 quarries of various sizes, and an absolutely beautiful prairie!  Two centuries ago Minnesota had 18 million acres tall grass prairie, today the remaining prairie is less than 1% of its original acreage.  Elk and buffalo provided meat, clothing and tools for the Plains Indians.  Plants of the prairie provided medicine and food.  The first botanist in 1838 found 100 different plant species, currently the number is 300.

What a stunning sea of red!  Fortunately the park has signs identifying many of the plants.  Smooth sumac plants give the prairie a hue of red during this time of the year.  Also in bloom now is the blue vervain, daisy  fleabane and stiff goldenrod.  The latter is pictured below.

The trail through the park took us along Pipestone Creek.  According to oral Indian tradition, it was along this stream where pipestone was first discovered.  Seasonal flooding of the creek may have exposed the rock, and/or it could have been the rutted trails created by buffalo drinking from the stream which revealed the red rock layer under the quartzite.  Speaking of that rock, the end of our trail took us to some very high cliffs made of that stone.  Pictured below is Old Stone face.

One last picture here is of Winnewissa Falls, I certainly did not expect to see such high falls out in the plains.  What a beautiful place this park is for Native Indians to have as their sacred ground to always return to, not just to quarry but to also worship the Great Spirit of their faith.

Pipestone National Monument

Over the week-end John and I took a bit of a side trip in our car to Lake Elmo, Minnesota where our niece Kathy, husband Doug and children live.  This time we did not move our rig, but used the car instead. On our way northeast to their home on Saturday we stopped at Pipestone park.   Artist George Catlin was the first white man to see this area in 1836, and in his art work recorded the Native American activity at the quarries.  For three centuries Indians viewed this ground as sacred and from this durable yet relatively soft red stone they carved their pipes.  The stone is pictured below, the other stone is quartzite, the layer of stone which lies above the pipestone.  Indians do not use machinery when they quarry here.

 

We saw the stone pictured above at the Visitor's Center.  At the center we also viewed a movie which gave us the story of this park.  Unfortunately after George Catlin drew attention to this place, the white man started visiting the quarry and removing the rock.  In 1849 a piece of it was sent to Washington D.C. to be put in the Washington Monument.  For awhile the land here was part of an Indian reservation, but settlers continued  to come in and build it.  Large amounts of the rock were also being quarried by the white man until the Indians ceded the land to the government so that it could be protected.  In 1937 it became a national park with only Native American tribes allowed to quarry the pipestone.  There are 50 quarries in this park.

To the American Indians of the Plains, the pipe has great cultural significance.  It is a primary communication between the spirit power and human beings.  American Indians believe that when a prayer is given with the smoking of the pipe, those prayers are carried to the Great Spirit with the smoke.  White man called it a "peace pipe" because it was smoked during treaty signings.  While at the center we watched a Native American carve a pipe.

Pictured below is the final product.  We saw a wide variety of pipes at the center's museum which have been carved over the years.

Outside we took the circle trail around the quarries.  The prairie around them is absolutely beautiful with a meandering creek and waterfalls.  Wildflowers are in bloom and large quartzite cliffs loom over the trail. . I will cover that part of our visit in the next posting.  Before I close I want to mention another piece of Native American culture which we saw along the trail.  We noticed strips of cloth hanging from trees.  A interpretive sign near them noted that the cloth and its color are significant to the wearer who placed them there, they are not to be removed.  The piece of cloth represents a prayer or offering.