Meet us in St Louis

Thursday morning we left Indiana and headed west for St Louis, MO. Jere has a cousin (of course) about an hour from the city. Our mileage projection for the day was over 400, so Gretchen and her five kids drove up to meet us close to the interstate. We last saw her and her two oldest children about 12 years ago, so we were looking forward to catching up. Our plan was to meet at the St Louis arch and have a picnic. Although it wasn't raining, the weather did not cooperate with eating al fresco. But that didn't stop us! Below the arch, there is a museum and visitor's center open to the public. Would you believe they let us bring our lunch in there? Maybe that doesn't sound too unusual, but Gretchen had made a large pot of delicious chicken soup, and like many national park facilities, you have to pass through airport-style security. So we had all these bags, totes, blankets and a large soup pot pass through the detectors. I really wanted a photo of the security guard lifting the lid to the soup pot to see what was inside, but didn't want to rock the boat any further. They were a little surprised at all of us but didn't see any problem with it as long as we didn't eat in carpeted areas. Didn't they know the dangers of a soup ladle?

After lunch, we did want to tour the museum but we had all this stuff. We asked if we could stow it under a bench but the guard thought it might look like a bomb. A short trip back to the car took care of that and we had an hour or so to visit and walk through the museum. Once again, we found that meeting up with extended family has been a wonderful part of this trip. We are so thankful for the extra effort people have taken to help make it happen. I think for our next trip, we will skip sightseeing and just hang out with people. Do you think they will give us patches?