St. Louis

Spent the weekend in beautiful St. Louis with three friends. Our intent was to shop and we weren't disappointed.

The beautiful Drury Hotel is west of the city and that's where we parked ourselves for the two days, thanks to the arrangements by one of the friends. The hotel is on atop a hill and our room was on the highest floor (10th) facing east. The first morning everyone got up early - 5:30 - to watch for the sunrise...which didn't occur until 6:50. But it was lovely and worth getting up for. Most of us had good attitudes about the hour. I admit I was the 5:30 riser and made just enough noise to get my friends a-stirring. There may have been some inner grumblings for the first hour and when we looked up the sunrise time on our phones and found we would have had plenty of time to sleep in.

Breakfast was compliments of the hotel. Ditto an extensive happy hour with real food, not just peanuts and pretzels.

The friend who drove had a penchant for steering toward exits and we found our Garmin lady frustrated but finding us alternate routes to places.

St. Charles, northwest of the city, is a lovely restored village filled with small shops and restaurants. We spent the day there after a grocery run to Trader Joe's for organic and hard-to- find edibles...and great customer service.

In St. Charles, one of my friends had run out of money and didn't have her checkbook. She had planned to charge her purchase but when she got to the register discovered they didn't take, well, Discover. None of us were around to lend her funds (clever of us, right?) so the shopkeeper, noticing her dilemma, simply said, "Just send me a check." Really, that did happen. In this day and age. And I know what you are thinking and yes, she text her husband right then and had him put a check in the mail.

This same friend had lost considerable weight recently and needed new clothes. Sales were abundant and seeing her delight in sizes that she couldn't ever remember wearing added to the celebration.

We kept in touch with the football scores to rejoice that Ohio State and the Colts had both won their weekend games and received an informative lecture on the state of the woolly bear. One of us had seen white ones so we looked up what that meant. More snow than usual this winter. Some had seen the brown-black-brown ones which means a colder than usual winter. We did not rejoice with any of this information although agreed that it was fascinating.

Back home, while we were gone, one of our sons had ridden his bike over 57 miles in the Hilly Ride in Bloomington, Indiana and one of our daughters had run 13.1 miles in a half-marathon.

It's good to stay connected to people and have friends that you like well enough with whom to travel. I'm looking forward to our next adventure.

And that's what I think about it.