A Texan in St. Louis

Rock Chalk Jayhawk and a Drag Queen or Two

This Texan in St. Louis left St. Louis this weekend and headed for the border into Kansas.  It was a decent drive.  There was lots of snow on the ground but thankfully, the roads were pretty clear.  We drove through a few areas of snow and there was a lot of snow on the roads but there wasn’t any accumulation on the highway. 

And just in case we were driving too fast…

We made it to Kansas City!

These are some random shots as we drove through town headed toward Lawrence.

This stadium is where the KC Chiefs play football.

downtown KC:

Lawrence, Kansas is about 45 minutes from downtown Kansas City, Missouri.

You can see KU at the top of the hill.

This is the main street through Lawrence where all of the bars, shops, restaurants, etc. are located.

We had some new and interesting experiences this weekend!  The first was attending a NCAA basketball game in Allen Fieldhouse.  I really had no idea it was even a big deal.  —shrugging—  Who knew?  So anyway, here’s my daughter and me at the game.  Notice the wall behind us.  That is the top of the arena.

Allen fieldhouse is named after Forrest “Phog” Allen who coached the Jayhawks basketball team for 39 years.  The court is named after Dr. James Naismith. He invented the game of basketball while he was teaching P. E. at the University of Kansas.  Lots of history in the place.  There is a sports museum next to the fieldhouse that has a lot of interesting displays about athletes from KU.  They’ve also got all of their earned trophies and stuff in the museum, too.  It’s a nice place and a neat experience.

The basketball game was crazy!  KU played West Virginia University and it was not exactly a competive match-up.  WVU got killed.  It was, however, a very exciting game.  The KU fan base is really into their team and the team is very talented. There were lots of 3 point shots, alley oops (or is it ali oops?) and just all around great basketball.  Did I mention that the fans are really, really into their team?  They yelled, cheered, chanted and occasionally boo’d.  The student section was probably the most active.  At the beginning of the game, when the WVU team was being introduced, they had a newspaper sized picture that said “Mountain Ears” – making fun of the WVU mascot the Mountaineers.  They also had confetti that they threw in the air when the home team was being introduced.  Everyone had a good time except maybe the WVU players and their few fans in attendance.  We had seats in the third section in the upper part of the arena but we still had a pretty decent view of the court.  KU is very proud of their basketball team…

Here’s a video clip of the end of the game.  I was hoping to hear the “rock chalk jayhawk’ chant, but it never really got going.   It was kind of disappointing to not hear it.

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Our semi-nosebleed seats were $100 each.  Perhaps that’s the going rate for college basketball games, but it seems kind of expensive to me.  Thankfully, our seats were sponsored by my husband’s job.  Yay!  It could have been a really expensive family outing.

After the game, we headed back into Missouri to spend the night in the Country Club Plaza area of Kansas City.  It is a really cute area with lots of great shops and restaurants.  There is a nice park and lots of swanky condos, apartments and lovely homes.  We had dinner at Trio and I believe I found a new favorite side dish:  collard greens.  No, before you go thinking there’s nothing new about collard greens, let me assure you that these were different.  I’ve been cooking collard greens for my husband for years… years…  I cook them, but I do not eat them.  They taste like wet leaves.  Oh, wait.  They ARE wet leaves.  But back to these greens at Trio.  They were bathed in some kind of broth with bacon and roasted red peppers.  They. were. delicious.  I also had snapper but I enjoyed the greens the most.  Here’s their website in case you are ever in KC and want to try it out:  http://cafetriokc.com/wp2/?page_id=182

We are old, so after dinner, we went to the hotel and went to sleep.  It had been along day.  We started the day at 5am and it was 10pm by the time we got back to the hotel after dinner, so yeah…  We went to bed.

On Sunday morning, we got up and out and stood in line at Hamburger Mary’s waiting to be seated for the Drag Queen show.

My husband and I have been to a DQ show before so this new experience was for our daughter.  We didn’t tell her about the show and it was kind of funny to see her see the DQ’s and try not to react to them.  This activity probably won us the “Bad Parent Award” for the day.  Our 16 year old was with us and after about 10 minutes, it was kind of awkward.  The host told lots of risque jokes that she assured parents would go over the head of the kids.  I suppose that would have been true for those parents of 10 year olds and younger, but our daughter ‘got’ every one of them.  It was fun and awkward all at the same time!  The ‘queens’ sang and danced for dollar tips.

Sorry for the fuzzy pictures!  They were moving and it was hard to take a good photo with my phone.

We ate our food, which was okay.  We had our fried Twinkies and Fried Snickers.  The fried Twinkies were the better of the two, by the way.

We ran through our little stack of 1 dollar bills right at about the time that we needed to go so we ducked out for a very quick shopping trip and started our trip back to ‘The Lou’.

So – I never mentioned what “Rock Chalk Jayhawk” means.  That’s because I don’t know. 

Here’s a site where you can read about the chant and also hear it as well as the school song:  http://www.ku.edu/about/traditions/chant.php

A Priest, A Rabbi and a Pastor walked into…

Happy Halloween people!  I’ve experienced another first in “The Lou”.

Neighbors had me all pumped up and excited about the HOARDS of kids that would be visiting on Halloween night.  I was sure I’d run out of candy and disappoint all of the late-comer princesses, mummies and Elmos.  I’d have to turn out the porch light and hide inside and hope no one took out their candy anger on us with toilet paper or eggs or shaving creme.

I bought some candy and other treats and at dusk, I headed out to the front porch to greet all of the trick-or treaters.  It was about 50 degrees (F), no wind and no rain.  (I thought early on that it was kind of okayish but as the night went on, I got cold.  My feet were frozen by 7:30.)

The first couple of groups of kids that came to the house were all fresh and new – hadn’t been walking long and were still looking giddy about getting the candy.  I wasn’t sure what was going on, though.  One group of kids – like 6 or 7 of them, all told me a joke.  They were cute elementary school aged jokes.  Some of the kids had great delivery, though, and they made me laugh.  A couple of them were so deadpan looking as they told their joke that it made me laugh.

Another group of boys came and acted out a skit.  It was a Batman against two bad guys scene.  At first, I thought they were actually fighting and I got a little nervous and was all like “Okay…  That’s enough boys…”  Duh!  Then I realized when one kid fell in the grass and pretended to be dead that it was a skit.  Ha ha!

I was a little confused about the jokes and the skit until the neighbor across the street came over and explained that it’s a St. Louis tradition to tell joke for the candy.  Ah!  Got it!

So, for the next hour and a half, I heard a plethora of knock knock jokes, jokes about mummy breakfasts, chickens and skeletons crossing the road, graveyards and Cardinals.  There was a group of 4 girls who sang Lady Gaga songs, a little girl who recited a poem and a boy who made up a song about Halloween candy.  It made sitting out in the cold giving away candy to kids kind of fun.  (Confession:  I don’t really get into Halloween.  I only gave away candy because my own 15 year old child was out trick or treating.)

There were a lot of kids.  I almost ran out of candy.  It was an interesting night.

Happy Halloween!

Mizzou/SEC Football – Go Tigers!

Let me start by making a confession:  I am not really what you’d call a college football fan.  I like going to games and the whole tailgating, hanging out experience.  I even yell and root for the home team and all, but I couldn’t name more than a couple of players on any given team, I have no idea what their stats are, I don’t know their hometowns and I still kind of struggle with the positions and their functions.

With all that said, I DO enjoy going to football games.

So, my new experience this weekend was going to a University of Missouri home game in Columbia, Missouri.  Confession #2:  I wasn’t all that jazzed about being around ‘Mizzou’ fans.  I don’t know why.  I just imagined a bunch of annoying people screaming and walking around looking like bumble bees all over the place.

I don’t own a yellow shirt and forgot that I could have worn black so I wore a blue shirt and khaki shorts.  Oh, well.

The drive from st. Louis to Columbia took about 2 hours.  It was uneventful.  Not too much traffic so we went straight there and parked.  We were in Lot O.  That won’t mean anything to you unless you’re a UM fan who frequents games, but to me, it meant we were relatively close to the stadium.  That is always a good thing!

Alright, so we’re here.  Nobody looks crazy – just a lot of devoted fans with their tents, campers, TVs, stereos and grills set up to have some fun.  We milled around a bit before we met up with the people that my husband works with and their customers.  I think there was an extra ticket – which is how I got to go to the game.
Off we go to the stadium!

We had seats in the ‘TOSTITOS Touchdown Terrace” which included food and drinks before and during the game.  It was set up so that you could see while you were there eating.  As you can see from the ticket, you pay a little bit of a premium for these seats, but it was a really nice setup.
We walked around the stadium before the game – just to look around.  The band came out onto the field and performed – not sure what for.  All I could think about was how small the band looked because in the back of my head, I kept thinking of the Allen High School Escadrille (We moved to this area from Allen, Texas).  The first picture is Allen HS.  The second two are Mizzou.

Anyway.  They looked nice – kind of quiet, but nice.
Now for some football!  We had really great seats on the third row at the end of the in zone (or whatever the place where you score a touchdown is called… don’t judge me!)

Here’s a little bit of the view of the full stadium from our seats:

Fans were regular old college football fans.  They cheered on their team but were not obnoxious or annoying as I had imagined they would be.

The announcer even led one cheer after each 1st down.  He would spell out  “M  I  Z” and then everyone in the stadium yelled back “Z  O  U”.

There were some acknowledgements after each quarter – after the first quarter, they presented something to the family of the first African American to receive a football scholarship.  At the beginning of half time, they presented a check to the Susan G. Komen foundation.  When they did this, the section of fans who were all wearing pink shirts, turned over signs to reveal a pink ribbon.  It was nice.

The band played in the stands just like any other game:

The dance team named the Golden Girls danced.  (The name made me think of Bea Arthur and Betty White, though.)

The mascot  – Truman – revved up the crowd:

And the governor – Gov. Nixon – even showed up!  My husband helped me flag him down from the rail to let us take his picture.  He was very nice about it.  Sorry, if he’s ‘someone’, but I have no idea who ‘the other guy’ is!

We had fun.  I even cheered and yelled for the home team.  I also got a pic of UM’s first touchdown!

I had a good time.  It sure didn’t hurt that the seats were so close, there was free food/drinks, the parking lot was close and everyone in the group was really nice.

My daughter went to her first high school homecoming dance that same night.  We had to leave Columbia shortly after half time to pick her up.  Mizzou DID hang on to win the game 24-20, though.

Fun times all around!

Balloons, Balloons, Balloons!

I love hot air balloons!  It’s so fun to see them float past in the sky but it’s equally as fun to see them on the ground and and glowing in the night.  I got a chance to see just that at the Great Forest Park Balloon Race Balloon Glow.  Here’s the event website:   http://www.greatforestparkballoonrace.com/

(They have a contest for ‘best photo’ which I won’t be entering, but you can see some great pics there.)

Parking for the even was supposed to be a nightmare.  The event’s website suggested visitors should arrive by 2:0 pm to get a parking space.  Uh – the event started at 7:00 p.m.  I guess people were gonna make a day of it and go to the museums, zoo, etc.  We’ve done all that and nobody here had five hours to spend in the park.  So… since we live ‘so close’, we thought it would be easier to walk to the balloon glow.

We packed up our picnic backpack (kinda hard to walk around holding a basket!) and blankets and headed down the street.  When we got to the major road, it looked like a parking lot.  I think we were walking faster than the cars were driving into the park.  I was feeling good about our decision to walk.  Yay, me!

Alright.  WHERE exactly is Central Field?  Surely not in the center of the park, cause we walked and walked and walked and walked….  I was getting tired – which is sad but I won’t get into that here.  Maybe I need to head to my other blog RunDedeauxRun.com and make a ‘lazy patrol’ confession… BUT I DIGRESS – back to the balloons!

Here’s a map of the park.  We live on the faaaaaaar  west end of the park.

So, we walked what I would estimate were about 2 and a half miles.  But we were walking fast.  I don’t know why.  I was just impatient and ready to get to the balloons.

When we got there it was PACKED.  Like shoulder to shoulder packed.  There were THOUSANDS of people there.  Big groups had tables, familes were lying around on the ground, others had their portable chairs – but they were all just packed in like sardines!  There were babies in strollers, kids on leashes, teenagers, middle aged moms and dads, old people…  Lots of people.  It was a struggle to wiggle our way through the crowd to get to the area where the balloons were set up, but we finally made it and it was SO WORTH IT!

Unlike other balloon events I’d been to (okay, I’d been to the same one several times), visitors could walk right up to the balloons and touch the basket, feel the fire and talk to the pilots!  It was crazy.  There were a  LOT of balloons.

Check out my lovely iPhone photos:  (Oh!  I should soon have better phone pics.  I’m getting an iPhone 5!! This will be the first time I’ve had the ‘new’ phone!)

The star of the event was the Energizer Bunny balloon.  On the next day, the bunny would be the balloon to start the Balloon Race.

After the balloon glow was over, the balloon teams let all of the air out of the balloons and they all started falling to the ground – some on top of the people who were standing too close.  It was kind of fun to watch.  People started backing up as if someone had yelled “Timber!”…  We didn’t have to back up because we set up our little picnic area next to a fence adjacent to where a private Habitat for Humanity fancy dinner-and-balloon-watching event was set up.

The event finale was a fireworks show.  I never really liked fireworks when I was growing up because the smoke gave me a headache, but now, I am fascinated by them.  I could watch fireworks all night!

The only thing left was to walk back home….

Fun times for this Texan in St. Louis!

Forest Park – Part I – Walking It

Have I ever mentioned what a GREAT area we chose when we moved to St. Louis?  We are surrounded by Washington University, Fontbonne University, Concordia Seminary, (all beautiful campuses) DeMunn Business District (really cute – has a few really nice restaurants/bars, a candy shop, coffee shop and park), an old styled movie theatre AND our house is a short walk from Forest Park.  I’d never heard of Forest Park before we moved here.  It is often referred to (by mostly native St. Louisians) as being ‘bigger than Central Park’ with a distinct sense of pride that is rightfully felt.  Forest Park is a.maz.ing.  Here is their official website:  http://stlouis-mo.gov/government/departments/parks/parks/Forest-Park.cfm

There’s so much stuff at this park that I couldn’t name it all right now – so I’ll just focus on my walk through the park this weekend (with my husband).

There are multiple paths circling and winding through the park that are available for walkers, runners, bikers and even those people on the elliptical/bike hybrid things.  We saw a guy on one this weekend.  I’ll just say he looked ‘interesting’.  It is also pretty easy to access the park if you aren’t within walking or biking distance.  There are buses that have stops inside the park and there is also a train station across the street from the park.  This is truly a park for anyone that wants to enjoy it.

Nearly every step of our walk of about 3 miles through the park was decorated by waterfalls, wildflowers, the golf course and trees of all shapes and sizes.  Some of the pathways are paved, some are gravel and some are good old fashioned dirt paths that lead into wooded areas of the park.  In one of the lightly wooded areas, we passed a cute little waterfall/stream.

A little further into our walk, we passed a sign pointing to “Tree Within a Tree” so we followed it because what exactly is a tree within a tree anyway?  The path was still a little damp from all of the rain that we’ve gotten from Tropical Depression Isaac and there were LOTS OF (EEEEK!) mosquitoes.  I am a little paranoid about the West Nile virus, so the excursion to see the tree within a tree was sure to be quick.  Lo and behold…  It was just a tree planted inside the fallen trunk of a very old tree.  I don’t believe Carly would have been impressed and neither was I.  Whatever…

So we kept walking.  I mentioned that there are a LOT of things to do in Forest Park, right?  Well one of them is the St. Louis Art Museum.  It is smack dab in the middle of the park.  (Okay – maybe not right in the exact middle, but… that doesn’t matter!)  It is free so we went on in.  As luck would have it, the day we visited was the very last day of a restoration exhibit.  Museum Restoration interns were working on an old Panorama.  It was about 8 feet tall and had 25 different scenes painted on a scroll.  Each of these scenes were about 10-12 feet wide.  It was really fascinating to see the two ladies working on correcting creases and scratches on the canvas caused by rolling and unrolling the scroll.

This exhibit reminded me of the little shoebox panoramas that we used to make in elementary school. Neither my husband or daughter had ever heard of such a thing.  I tried to find a picture that was close to what we did as kids but I just couldn’t find one.  Am I the only one that did these in elementary school?  You can take a look at the scenes on the giant one at the SLAM:  http://www.slam.org/panorama/about.php

Here’s a picture of the statue in front of the SLAM.  Btw…  there are sculptures and statues ALL OVER THIS CITY.  It is really a reminder of the wealth and grandeur that this city once had.

This is the view of the park with the museum at your back.  The museum is at the top of a hill.

We stood and watched some boot campers, a couple of women running ‘the hill’ and some little girls enjoying the hill.  If this doesn’t make you smile, I don’t know what will:

(Thanks to my husband for snapping all of these pics!)

We had a nice walk through the park and back home.  We saw some sights, but there are many, many more things to enjoy in this park.

Come back for Part II – The Boathouse.