Home Turf Tourist: Tomato Art Fest in Nashville, Tennessee

Since before we placed the order for our RV we have been dreaming of all the places we want to explore, but as we get closer to actually having the RV it has occurred to both of us that we have taken our home town for granted. Like a lot of locals in an area popular with tourists, we tend to stay away from the most popular areas and when we do go explore Nashville attractions it’s because we are taking friends and family from out of town. So, with our RV delayed we decided to change that and get out to explore Nashville. This post is the first of our Home Turf Tourist series where we will highlight places and events in the Nashville area and, hopefully, entice you to look beyond the Grand Ole Opry and the honky-tonks on Lower Broadway when you visit.

For the first entry in this series we visited Tomato Art Fest in East Nashville. The festival began in 2004 when a pair of gallery owners held a series of events to publicize an upcoming tomato themed art show. Since then it has grown into a wacky yearly event that draws tens of thousands to the Five Points area of East Nashville to celebrate the uniting qualities of the fruit that’s also a vegetable. The festival features contests, tomato themed art, food trucks, contests and live music, a Bloody Mary garden party and it highlights the vibrant East Nashville community.

The opening event on Saturday is the Push, Pull & Wear parade that features people dressed in tomato inspired attire pushing or pulling homemade tomato-themed parade floats surrounded by marching bands and lots of revelers. When we arrived the parade was already in full swing and it’s quite a sight! It’s like a Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans except everyone was in red and green and the floats were a whole lot smaller! But, folks pull out all the stops to create their costumes and construct their floats. The streets were jammed with revelers as the parade went by making it hard to tell who was a spectator and who was in the parade! I guess it didn’t really matter because everyone was having so much fun.

Small vendor tents lined the streets radiating in every direction featuring local artists and lots of organizations from dental offices to car insurance. About a block away the street was lined with food trucks featuring gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches and other delights. There was even a tent offering a place for your dog to cool down in a kiddie pool full of ice! A valuable thing to have on a very hot August day. There were also farm stands selling tomatoes and other produce where we bought a slice of watermelon to nibble on as we walked around enjoying the music on three different stages.

The stages featured something for everyone, from a New Orleans style brass band to acoustic harmonies to rock. There was also a cooking stage featuring local chefs and the contest stage where they held competitions and announced winners. Some of the contests this year included a pet fashion show, a tomato 5K, tomato haiku, a cornhole competition, a biggest littlest ugliest contest and a home decorating contest for neighborhood homeowners to get in on the fun. Other activities included a Giant Ice Cream Sundae extravaganza, a kids art show, a tomato toss and bobbing for tomatoes.

If you wanted to escape the heat you could duck into one of the many fine local eateries located in Five Points. The area features Five Points Pizza which has incredible New York style pies, I Dream of Weenie, a creative hot dog stand and local institution based in a converted Volkswagen bus and a host of other great options.

I Dream of Weenie was doing a brisk business.

Despite all the great options, we decided to leave the festival and go find another local highlight about 10 minutes away. Mas Tacos Por Favor began as a food truck making incredible $3 tacos before settling into its home on McFerrin Avenue in the Greenwood neighborhood. There we had the chicken tortilla soup, a couple of sweet potato and quinoa vegan tacos, and chilequiles, a dish we knew nothing about beyond the description on the sign that said “breakfast nachos”. That description didn’t begin to describe the bowl of sheer awesome that we experienced. Chips covered in a thick, slow cooked tomato sauce and shredded chicken, literally exploding with flavor, topped with a perfectly cooked fried egg. It was large enough that we split it and had to get the soup to go. We washed down lunch with a pair of refreshing agua frescas in flavors of pineapple, orange and carrot.

Chilequiles topped with a fried egg. Come really hungry or be prepared to split it.

Before I finish talking about lunch I have to talk about the tortilla soup that we carried home and ate for dinner. Most tortilla soups are thick and stew-like and usually have a decent quantity of cheese on top. Their tortilla soup is nothing like that. It’s a slow cooked, deeply flavored chicken broth with a little lime juice, corn, cilantro and perfectly sliced avocado in the soup. A small bag of tortilla strips came on the side to add.

Mas Tacos Por Favor made a fine finish to our morning of exploration and it’s definitely worth a visit if you are ever in Nashville. Just make sure to bring cash because they don’t take credit cards, however, they do have an ATM in the back in case of taco emergency.

If you happen to visit Nashville during the second week of August, the Tomato Art Fest is a must see. It’s been called one of the best festivals in the south. Admission to the festival is free and activities kick off with a concert on Friday night, then go all day Saturday. Since August in the south is usually hot enough to roast a tomato, bring water, sunscreen and a wide-brimmed hat… preferably in a particular shade of red.

Road Trip!

The new Leisure Travel Van Unity Rear Lounge at Van City in St. Louis for their Anniversary Celebration.

What a lovely weekend! We had a great road trip to St. Louis all things considered. The trip started off expeditiously, and we made good time with little traffic, which nowadays is an unexpected blessing on Tennessee, Kentucky and Illinois roads.

Once we reached St. Louis, we headed straightaway to Van City and had a marvelous time crawling through the new Unity Rear Lounge (URL). It was everything we thought it would be and better. This is a unit without a slide, so our expectation was that it would feel very close, but that was not the case at all for us. For one, the rear lounge was very loungie (technical term), just the sort of place where you could get comfortable. The two back windows on the left (human and cat) made the smallish space feel very light and roomy. The 32 inch TV was lovely and felt plentiful for the space. The wine rack did nothing for me, as I suppose you must be a wine drinker to have a true appreciation. What was surprising was that the front area was roomier than expected, with the nice big kitchen area (yes, we recognize that big is relative when talking RV space) and with the front seats turned around, I could see being happy hanging out in the front as well as the back. The bathroom door could block off the back area of the RV, which was nice. The finish was better than either of us expected, it’s similar to the Wonder and we have not been a fan of the Wonder finishes overall, but this one looked really good. The new countertop surface worked for me.

It was all good until we took it out for a test drive. Then it became TOTALLY AWESOME!!! For starters, the driver’s space was roomy and well laid out, and I had a deep appreciation for the beefy cup holders, as that is a sore spot for me. The seats were comfortable, and the seat extender, which we both thought was a bit gimmicky, really did improve comfort. The best part was driving. It was almost too easy. Driving it was like driving an SUV. Anyone can do it. The steering wheel really could be turned with a pinky finger. I liked the paddle shifters more than I thought I would (being a stick shift purist, paddles are no substitute) giving me the extra measure of control that I would have with a stick shift. I really wish the Mercedes came with a stick shift, but I do not know of any American RVs that are manual, and the paddles are a compromise I can live with.

The rear lounge looking toward the rear of the RV. Note the two stacked windows which add a tremendous amount of light. The cushion was feeling the strain of hundreds of people trying out the coach.
The view from the rear lounge looking forward. Note the LED rope light in the ceiling which makes the coach nice and bright while adding some European style to the interior.
Looking from the front of the coach to the rear lounge. Note the refrigerator has handles on both sides of the doors. That’s because it can open from either side!
This is a look at the galley and the front seating area. We LOVE the Lagun table. It can be removed from its mount in the front of the coach and placed in the rear lounge to give you a work surface!
Outside there is a place to mount the optional exterior table.

After spending several hours at Van City, chatting with Don Klassen, a group of other LTVers we headed out to our hotel in Edwardsville, with a stop at a place called “The Cup” which was recommended to us by a friend. Think glorious cupcake confections, folks, and many varieties. We picked up a dozen (plus 2 small ones for the road for quality control) to give to the friends we were visiting and headed to see them. We had a lovely time out with our friends and then went back to their place for desert….and what a glorious dessert it was. We opened the wonder that was the cupcake box and there, before our eyes were 12 distinctly different cupcakes. It was at this point that strategy came into play. We all wanted all of the cupcakes. No two were alike, so if we each picked one, the rest would be denied the lusciousness of the claimed cupcake, so out came the knife. Being that there were 5 of us, slicing up the cupcakes was not exactly scientific, but we made it work. We knocked off 5 cupcakes in the first sitting, with the obvious winners being the german chocolate cake and the Italian wedding cupcake. Woozy on sugar, we finally called it a night. On Saturday, we met up again, went out on the lake, enjoyed another fine meal and between lunch and dinner, managed to kill off the rest of the cupcakes. By unanimous vote the absolute winner of all was the banana cream pie cupcake. The birthday cake, red velvet and the chocolate chip cupcakes were also strong. There was really only 1 weak player in the entire dozen, which was the lemon blueberry which was neither lemony or blueberryie. In looking back over this paragraph, I wax rhapsodic about the sugar quite a bit, but the real joy of the weekend was seeing our friends, with whom we seem to do nothing but laugh. All the time. Until our sides hurt. Then some more. These friends are part of the not so secret mountain dulcimer underground, and all musicians know how to have a good time, this weekend being no exception. Finally, we said good bye and went back to our hotel, getting to bed around 11:15 pm-ish with the expectation of getting up and hitting the road around 10 am. Now why would anyone care what time we went to bed? Well, that is where it got interesting. At about 1:15ish AM, the hotel was struck by lightning, all of the fire alarms went off, and we were evacuated. Staggering out of our rooms, we smelled smoke, which put some spring in our steps as we made our way to the lobby, where we stayed while the fire department was brought in. Fortunately, the lightning did not cause a fire, it just burned out some electronics, but the hotel staff and fire department could not get the alarms to reset. Finally, they told us we could go back to our rooms, but, with the alarm going off at an earsplitting decibel level, there would be no sleep, so we grabbed our stuff and checked out at 3:45. After filling up on the complimentary coffee (Kudos to the smart front office clerk who refilled it during our wait), we hit the very, very empty road.

The ride home was rough, as we were both operating on fumes and staying awake was a two person job.  Fortunately, no one can stay asleep when I am belting out Radar Love.  We arrived home at about the time we had expected to leave Edwardsville and promptly went face down for a couple of hours.

Happy travels!

The Cup has two locations in the St Louis area.

Going to see about an RV

So last weekend, we said goodbye to the working majority of our furniture.  NOW we see a difference.  My sister and her husband rented a truck, I contracted with a moving company to have 2 movers assist with loading (best. decision. ever.) and away went our furniture, some kitchen goods and assorted odds and ends to help my nephew set up his first post-college place.  A note about the moving company; At Your Service movers is the name of the company, and they were truly exceptional. I paid for 2 hours of their time and they took the big stuff out of my house and into the truck.  They arrived on time, they were friendly, courteous, they took care of both our furniture and house and I could not have been happier (my back agrees).  Best money I have spent in a long time.  We moved so much furniture out that we had to break out the camp chairs afterwards so everyone had a seat. 

As a reward for making such huge progress on downsizing last weekend, we are taking a quick weekender to St. Louis for the 49th anniversary celebration at Van City.  As all 3 of our readers know, we are purchasing our RV through Van City.  Last year at this time, we went and saw the new Wonder RTB prototype they were testing prior to launching.  This year, they will have the Unity Rear Lounge, which we are dying to see.  On the surface, that unit is smoking hot, with loads of windows, including ones at cat height, which is the equivalent of super luxe cable tv to our furry little tyrants.  The recliner seating is also appealing to us, as is the kitchen. It is on the 2019 Mercedes chassis, which is the same as our FX will have. The only real negative is that the Murphy bed is just not big enough for us.  For one, we are not small people, and for another, someone who shall remain nameless likes to sleep dead center in the bed, leaving someone else (me) clinging to the side.  As in every successful relationship, give and take is key to our marriage, so while I give him that extra space, I take away all of the covers and wrap myself like a human burrito, leaving him with mostly nothing.  Hey, it works for us. 

We love St Louis, and both are feeling the itch for a road trip, so this cannot come soon enough.  Since we know we will be sporting two mortgages (house and RV) for a bit after we get the RV, we are saving all of our pennies to tide us over, which means no major international trips….grrrrrrr.  Now, this is the part where I could go wax rhapsodic about deferred gratification and how it leads to being able to live your dreams (which is true).  I could discuss with a hint of self righteous pride the intrinsic rewards of internal discipline (not feeling it) but right now it is just plain sucks, so I am going to focus on the things I am looking forward to in St. Louis.  1. New RV to explore. ( Aiyeee!).  2. Breakfast at the MudHouse. 3) Insomnia Cookies. 4. Seeing our friends Rich and Lana and at least 1 new thing, yet to be discovered, which is the entire reason we like to travel.  Insatiable curiosity. 

Eye on the prize, dang it!

Downsizing Details: A (Smaller, Lighter) Good Night’s Sleep

The ResMed Air Mini is only slightly larger than my hand.

When we talk about downsizing it’s usually about getting rid of things, however an equally important aspect of downsizing is finding smaller lighter alternatives for the things that we must take with us. So, what does getting good sleep have to do with downsizing to live in an RV? Well, for those of us with sleep apnea, good sleep involves help a CPAP machine. I’ve had sleep apnea for most of my adult life. I stop breathing in my sleep which causes me to wake up just enough to start breathing again. Apnea is a Greek word that means without breath. I was never aware that I was awake, but when I was first diagnosed, I learned that it was happening hundreds of times a night causing me to lose hours of sleep! Left untreated sleep apnea can lead to high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, or accidents caused by not being alert.

I consider myself lucky that I was diagnosed in my early thirties and was able to get help then. I will never forget the first night I spent using a CPAP because it changed my life. It happened during my very first sleep study. I was covered in electrodes and went to sleep, then at some point during the night I heard the technician say, “you’re scaring me, I’m going to put this on you” then she strapped the CPAP mask to my face. I woke up the next morning and I felt incredible! Colors were brighter, I had more energy than I had ever had and I may have even seen a unicorn! Carolyn noticed the change as soon as she saw me. The feeling stayed with me but slowly faded over the next few days. I couldn’t wait to get my own CPAP! Back then, a CPAP was roughly the size of a cinder block and took up most of my bedside table. If we went on a trip I packed it along even though it took a third of my suitcase. It was totally worth the effort. But, the charm of lugging around a cinder block, even one that makes you insanely happy, begins to wear thin and even though they got smaller over the years, my last CPAP was about half the size and weighs 3 pounds. With size and weight being a concern as we downsize, not to mention if we travel internationally, I asked my doctor about options during my last visit and he told me about something new, and, it’s a game-changer (A term I normally don’t like because it has become so over used but it’s true here).

ResMed has made a travel size CPAP called the AirMini. The device is 5.4 inches long, 3.3 inches wide and 2.1 inches high (just slightly larger than my fist) and it weighs about a half a pound. It fits, along with the power cord, hose and mask, into a bag that is about the size of a football. For comparison, my other CPAP when packed in its travel case is 13”x10”x5” and it weighs 5 pounds. The AirMini is controlled by a smartphone app currently available for iPhone and Android. The app keeps track of all your sleep data, allowing you and your doctor to see how long it’s used per night, whether your mask is maintaining a good seal and how many apnea events happen per hour then combines all of it into a score that lets you know if you are using it effectively. And, best of all, the power consumption of the AirMini is rated at less than one amp which will be important when we are relying on batteries and an inverter.

Now, the best CPAP in the world can be ruined by an uncomfortable mask and I have had a few of those through the years. I have a dent on the bridge of my nose to prove it. But, the mask I got with the AirMini is the most comfortable mask I have ever used. Period. It’s lighter with more flexible connections to the head gear and magnetic connections to make taking the mask on and off much easier. The best part is that it has no plastic bar covering the bridge of my nose so my face stays clear, allowing me to put my glasses on if I need to.

Because the hose is smaller than standard size, there are only a few masks that fit the Air Mini, pictured here is the N20 nasal mask. The others are the F20 and F30 full face masks and the P10 nasal pillow.

The only negative, and it’s a big one, is that it isn’t covered by insurance. However, when I bought my unit, my sleep specialist offered a discount to help offset the lack of insurance coverage and I was able to use my Flexible Spending Account to purchase the unit.

Let me interrupt here to say something important. Getting diagnosed and getting treatment absolutely changed my life for the better. If you have trouble sleeping at night, feel sleepy during the day or your spouse or partner tells you that you snore loudly, stop breathing or choke and gasp during the night, check with your doctor about getting a sleep study done right away. Believe it or not, one of the risk factors is neck size. Men with a neck size over 17 inches and women with a neck size over 16 inches are at greater risk of snoring and sleep apnea and loud snoring is a symptom of sleep apnea. My snoring was so loud that, while tent camping at a music festival, I had someone confront me the first morning with, “did you sleep well? Because none of us did!” It wasn’t long after that I got into my first sleep study. Please, don’t wait to get your symptoms checked.

After nearly twenty years of using a CPAP, the AirMini will be invaluable as we downsize toward life in an RV. Not only is it smaller, but it can run on 110 or 12 volt power using an adapter that costs about $70 and a battery is being developed for it, but it isn’t available yet. There is also a kit that allows you to mount it on a wall, over a drawer front, or even on the side of the bed. All of which makes it great for a mobile lifestyle in 175 square feet of living space. If you’re a CPAP user downsizing to a smaller living space, the ResMed AirMini is well worth discussing with your sleep specialist.

Still Endless

So how is the endless process of downsizing?  Still endless. Many trips to Goodwill, many bags of stuff taken to the office and left out for co-workers to scavenge, multiple listings on EBay, Let It Go and Facebook Marketplace, and we still have TOO. MUCH. STUFF!!!  We have sunk so low as to crash our friend’s community yard sales.  Crashing other yard sales is really a lot of fun and I highly recommend it.  We drive up with a couple of Element’s worth of crap (our car is a Honda Element, so it holds a lot of crap), set it out, break out the coffee and snacks, and basically have a bit of brunch while we collect a profit.  All in all, not a bad way to go about things.

However, for all of our progress, we still have not tipped that edge to the side of an emptyish house.  Yes, there are gaps and empty cabinets and shelves and such, but overall, the house still feels mostly intact.  I swear the cats are dragging more crap into the house while we sleep!  Each day we try to make a bit of progress, sometimes big, sometimes small.  Tonight, we rolled coins…lots and lots of coins.  We will be very well prepared for coin operated laundry machines once we hit the road, that is for sure.  In the process  we also found quite bit of Philippine, Hong Kong and Singapore coins from our past travels as well as surprising number of Sacajawea dollars, which we have absolutely no clue of how we obtained them….probably part of the cats’ nocturnal house restocking program. It is interesting how often we look at something nowadays and ask ourselves, “now where did this come from?”

This week’s lesson learned – Lots of folks give advice about how to deal with boxes of photos.  Take pictures of the pictures and then pitch the original they say.  To this I say hogwash.  Taking pictures of pictures so that you can get rid of the originals is an aggravating process.  There is always an issue, either with light bouncing off of the photo or cropping or a curl, something to make me want to toss the photo back in the box and the box in the trash.  Maybe scanning will work better.  In the meantime, I will eat ice cream.  I mean, really, someone has to clear out the freezer, and it may as well be me.

What’s next?  Coming up next is another yard sale, this one actually at our own house, closely followed by another trip to Goodwill with the items that do not sell, and then my sister and her husband are coming with a moving truck for the furniture.  We are giving most of our furniture to one of her sons who is setting up his first adult household after graduating from college.  Some other items are going to my sister’s place for set up in a spare bedroom.  They have also graciously offered us some of their spare attic space, as apparently their attic is the Taj Mahal of attics and their stuff is lonely up there all by their lonesomes.  We are grateful in the extreme for this offer, especially knowing that my sister likes clutter about as much as I do, which is not at all.

Since our RV has been delayed until September, we are going to hold back a couple of comfy chairs for now, but I am hoping that this will do the trick to finally make it feel like we are making the kind of progress we want to be ready for the RV. If not, there is always more ice cream in the freezer that needs to be cleared out.

Cheers!

Carolyn

The Waiting is the Hardest Part!

We ordered our Leisure Travel Van Unity FX in September 2018 knowing we were looking at, approximately, an eight month wait. Last week we learned that, due to a production delay, the new expected date for our Unity is September 2019. The news was disappointing because it means we’ll be watching and reading about everyone’s summer adventures while we continue to downsize and prepare the house for sale. It feels a little like being the kid who is home sick on the day of the class field trip. But, once we learned that the delay means we will get a 2020 model with new and better features we started to feel differently, so, we spent a night listing the other ways this could be good news and that is what I want to share today.

First, and most obviously, it means we have more time to continue to downsize and prepare the house for sale. We’ve learned that downsizing needs to be done in stages. Once things start coming out of closets, drawers and cabinets one or more rooms end up looking like a hoarder’s nest until we can work our way through the piles of stuff and sort them to sell, donate or trash. To our dismay it sometimes feels like malicious elves come in at night and refill all the closets, drawers and cabinets, so, we end up clearing places multiple times. But, I am amazed that the longer stuff stays around the less I love it. Things that were once difficult to let go become easier once I see them as an obstacle to progress.

Donating items or taking them to the dump is easy. But, selling items has been harder than we first thought it would be. One reason is you have to let go of what you think something is worth because items never sell for as much as you think they should. Yard sales are humbling in that way, but they are also surprising because more than once items have sold that we thought no one would ever want. We also learned that selling items online has been more time consuming than it first appeared to be. Taking time to photograph and describe each thing, then answer questions from prospective buyers takes time, and if something doesn’t sell, we have to decide if we want to drop the price on it before it gets relisted. It sometimes takes three listing rounds before something sells.

We put higher value items on eBay because eBay’s fees wipe out a chunk of the money made from selling. I learned quickly to never put a reserve price on an auction item because they charge a huge fee to do that, and once it’s done you cannot take the reserve off when the item gets relisted. Facebook Marketplace has been a good place to sell a number of items, but you have to make sure to meet potential buyers in a busy or secure place to complete the sale. The same is true for Let Go which is the newest selling app we’ve tried. An additional frustration with Let Go, however, is that it’s designed to make selling a social experience allowing people to “Favorite” your listing – the equivalent of a Facebook Like. Favorites are filling my In Box but they aren’t clearing things out of our house!

The second positive thing is we have more time to get our cats ready. We have to make the RV a safe, comfortable home for our three furry, OCD homebodies and we will need to take things in stages for them as well. Once the RV arrives, we will scent it with our stuff and plug in a Feliway diffuser which releases a calming pheromone into the air before we bring them into the RV. Then we will let them stay in it while it’s sitting still to get used to the new surroundings before we start driving. In the meantime, knowing that we will need to restrain them on occasion and also let them go outside in a safe controlled way, we purchased a harness and tried it on our most patient cat. She handled it very well, though she did walk funny while she was wearing it. Now, we will introduce it to the other two along with lots of treats and affection, though, I also plan to have the video camera ready because it will make entertaining TV once the hurting stops. We also have to get them used to a different type of litter box with the entrance on top to keep down mess in the RV. They are all older cats who have not had a lot of changes in the lives. Hopefully all these steps will make the transition less stressful for them and for us. We’ll see.

Finally, we realized that it would suck to get our new RV literally weeks before the new model went into production with all of its upgrades. Like animals in an experiment we will get a better treat if we wait. So we are also channeling the frustrated energy into planning our new home. The RV we ordered doesn’t stay on dealer’s lots, so it’s hard to see one in person. We travelled to an RV show where we knew the type of unit we ordered would be so we could spend a long time sitting in it to see if it would be truly comfortable and I also took along a measuring tape to measure ALL of the storage areas, including the pull out pantry. Lord help me, I even built a spreadsheet of all those dimensions! That way we can begin planning how to organize our new space. I’m not planning to within a fraction of an inch – I’ve been through enough construction projects to know measurements can change – but, at least we can start looking at containers we may need and we can plan where to put specific items like clothing, kitchen items, bedding and cat items. (On a side note, while cleaning out some boxes of papers I came across a floorplan my mom drew of her last apartment. It included measurements for all the spaces and the dimensions of her furniture so she could arrange them before she moved in.  This apple didn’t fall far from the tree!)

Even though we try to keep looking on the bright side, keeping ourselves motivated is hard. To help with that we read a lot of blogs and watch a lot of YouTube. There are a number of channels that we watch regularly to follow people’s adventures in their RV’s and we are always discovering new ones. On particularly hard days we will (re)watch the Leisure Travel Van video walk-through of our model. By now, we’ve practically memorized it, and, even though we’ve never met Dean from Leisure Travel Vans in person, he’s been invited into our home more than our friends or family have in the last few months. And speaking of our friends and family, I have to take a moment to apologize to all of you that we made sit through the video with us. I’m sure it was just as painful as an overly long vacation slideshow, so, thank you all for playing along and being good sports!

It’s not always easy to keep seeing the glass as half full but we keep trying to do exactly that. Once our unit goes into production we will anxiously wait for any update, but until then we have more than enough to keep us busy and before we know it we will be out on the road.

 

Downsizing Details: My Fujifilm Love Story

As downsizing means saying goodbye to more and more things, whether through sales, donations, or simply being thrown away. I wanted to address a hobby of mine that I’m unwilling to give up. My challenge has become how to reduce the size and weight of all the components that I need so they will fit in our new life. And, that is what I want to address today.

I have been a photographer since the tenth grade. I was on the yearbook staff and we had no one to take pictures of all the events that happen around the school, so I decided to give it a try. I had no idea how to operate a 35mm camera but I pulled out the old family Argus with its giant flash with replaceable bulbs the size of a fig and worked my way through my mom’s photography textbook. I was instantly hooked!

I eagerly blinded large groups of people with that flash while I shot pep rallies and other events. I became so obsessed my parents bought me a Canon AE-1 for Christmas and my brother gave me some of his older lenses. They also signed me up for a photography course at the local community college. From there, I went on to shoot for the yearbook, the school newspaper and occasionally the local paper for the rest of the time I was in high school. I would also save up my lunch money all week then go buy rolls of film just so I could go shoot. I was in love and I have held on to my AE-1 and all my lenses even though I haven’t shot on film for many years.

I switched to digital and got a DSLR. I’ve been a Canon shooter all these years, but the cameras and lenses have grown absurdly big and heavy. Carrying my camera on trips was literally a pain in the neck and sometimes it stayed behind in the hotel because I simply didn’t want to bother with it. Not to mention that I found myself having to dig through menus to set basic functions on the camera, leaving me feeling like I was fighting the camera to take a picture. I resigned myself to leaving some functions set to auto just to cut down on having to find the right menu and the number of pictures I took that I was happy with decreased sharply. For someone who had been taking pictures for thirty-plus years it was deeply frustrating. But, I continued on the same path because I had sunk so much money into the camera and lenses and I couldn’t find an attractive alternative.

Then, quite by accident, I became aware of Fujifilm in 2015 when I saw a photographer rave about his Fujifilm X-T1 in a YouTube video.  Intrigued by what I saw, I visited my local camera store and spent some time playing with one. It was MUCH smaller and lighter than my Canon, though it felt incredibly solid in my hands. It felt almost exactly like my beloved Canon AE-1. In fact, it’s close to the same size. Looking at the specs I learned that the camera and kit lens together weighed less than my Canon 7D body alone and only slightly more than my Canon lens alone. And, being mirrorless, you see exactly what your picture will look like through the electronic viewfinder. But, the feature that made me fall in head over heels in love was that all the exposure settings, except for the aperture, were on dials on top of the camera body. The aperture setting was inside the viewfinder, but it could be set using the aperture ring on the lens. (Some of the Fuji lenses actually have an old style aperture ring) I instantly knew all my settings simply by glancing down at the top of the camera. I wouldn’t have to fight the camera!

It took some time, but I eventually bought the X-T2 and the 18-55mm “kit lens” and I am utterly and completely in love with my camera again! Since I’ve had it I’ve shot every picture using manual settings because the camera is so encouraging. And, I need to qualify the term “kit lens”. It usually refers to a lens that’s mostly plastic and not particularly good. However, Fujifilm apparently didn’t get that memo. The 18-55mm has a metal body and is a very, very good lens. I am constantly amazed at how sharp my images are and how little work I have to do to fix lens problems on my computer. I find myself shooting things I never tried in the past like shooting pictures of the Milky Way, and best of all, I look forward to carrying my camera with me.

Of course I purchased a second lens, a 14mm wide angle lens with a wide aperture an old style aperture ring AND depth of field markings above the focus ring. It looks like an update of my old Canon FD lens. And, speaking of my FD lens from the seventies. I was able to purchase a $20 adapter to attach my old Canon lenses to my Fuji camera. They are completely manual, but Fuji has a very good system for manually focus called “focus peaking”. It outlines your subject in white (or red, in my case) when it’s in focus. So I expanded my range of lens for $20! It’s not a permanent solution because digital tends to show the shortcomings of the old lenses, but it sure has come in handy when I needed a telephoto lens or risked losing a photo opportunity.

So, what does this do for me in terms of downsizing? Here are some numbers:

Size Weight
Canon 7D 5.5”x4.4”x2.9” 32.2 oz
Canon EF-S 17-85mm lens 3.1” x 3.6” 16.75 oz
Tamron 17-300mm 3.02” x 4.6” 15.34 oz
Size Weight
Fujifilm X-T2 5.24” x 3.62” x 1.93” 17.88 oz
Fujinon 18-55mm 2.56” x 2.8” 10.6 oz
Fujinon 14mm 2.6” x 2.3” 8.3 oz

The Fuji kit is over almost two pounds lighter, and that makes a big difference when you carry it around!

So, I sold my Canon gear and I also my heavy Manfrotto tripod which I replaced with a carbon fiber tripod that is two pounds lighter without sacrificing height. It also folds down much smaller, making it easier to bring along. And, that is really the key point of all the changes I’ve made. By making everything smaller and lighter I’ve made it less of a pain to bring along which increases my opportunity to shoot.

Taking the Leap

I’m sorry I haven’t posted anything in a while. Life has been having its way with us. But, we really wanted to share our BIG NEWS.

This week we held hands and jumped off the cliff. We travelled to Van City in St. Louis and ordered our new RV, a Leisure Travel Van Unity FX. The experience is so new that we can still hear the wind rushing past our ears. With luck we’ll land comfortably in our ultra-leather seats in about eight months. But, until we do we are well aware that the work has truly begun. So, why did we make this choice? Glad you asked.

We first became aware of Leisure Travel Vans in 2017. The pangs of dissatisfaction had become too much and we decided to start actively looking at RV’s. I had seen videos for Pleasureway on YouTube, a Canadian manufacturer of Class B and Class C RV’s, and we both liked the idea of a smaller vehicle. That led us to a dealer outside of Atlanta and a half day introductory education in RV’s. The first thing we learned is that a Class B is REALLY small. Neither of us liked the idea of a wet bath. Imagine hosing down your bathroom every time you shower. Yeah, it was a hard limit. If we were only using it to camp, then it might be fine, but as a way of life it wasn’t going to work for us.

The next step up is a small class C, or what they call a B+. Still built on a van chassis, it has more space, a dry bathroom and a bit more room. Definitely more liveable in the long term. It was quite an education but, what we came away with is that Canadians know how to build a high quality RV. We also spent time looking at the Class A RV’s…just in case. Class As are what most people think of when they think of an RV. They look like a bus from the outside and the interiors run the gamut from basic to over-the-top luxury. Some look like a house on the inside with residential refrigerators, dishwashers and washers and dryers. We were dazzled by the amount of wood molding and the size of the upholstered furniture and came close to giving up the idea of small and nimble in favor of a big rolling house.

Then Carolyn made an accidental discovery. One night on YouTube, she came across a video by a Canadian company neither of us knew anything about. Leisure Travel Van is located in Winkler, Manitoba and they build RV’s on a van chassis with interiors full of clean lines where everything is multifunctional. No over the top moulding, which was just off-putting. The style was an ocean away from everything else we had seen up to that point. Literally. They are much more akin to European motorhomes is their style and versatility and, being fans of clean lines, we fell in love. Hard. Our challenge, though, was to see one in person. We visited Van City in Saint Louis (the closest dealer) and came to learn that they’re sold as fast as they’re built. It is incredibly rare to see one on a dealer lot. They are also very hard to find used and their rarity means they hold their value incredibly well.

To see one in person we travelled to Tampa for the Florida RV Show. Over the course of two days we got to see every model of Leisure Travel Van in person and to make another round of the Class A’s we had looked at just to be sure about our choice. It was also our first time being immersed in the RV world, you can read about our experience here. We came home feeling a bit like Superman at that moment when he has to put his glasses back on and be Clark Kent, again. We were sure of our path forward but it was time to go back to our present reality.

We also came home from Tampa with a lot of questions that were difficult to get answered in the hustle and bustle of a giant RV show. We wrote them down as they occurred to us over the next five months, then made a second visit to Van City to get answers. What we didn’t expect was to meet temptation, but we arrived during Van City’s Anniversary celebration, part of which was having a brand new Leisure Travel Van Wonder rear twin bed prototype available to tour. We wrote about it here. It was REALLY tempting to change our minds about the RV we wanted but we managed to stay on track. Despite being busy that day, the sales rep and the factory rep took a lot of time to answer every one of our questions. I can’t thank them both enough for being so generous with their time.

This past Friday we visited again to place our order. There were spontaneous giggles and maybe some foot stomping and hand clapping during the five hour drive. We arrived at Van City just after lunch time and headed triumphantly to the door, feeling like Luke and Han Solo getting their medals at the end of Star Wars: A New Hope. We reached for the door…and found out everyone was at an RV show about a half hour away! So, we got back into the car and drove a half hour to the show, parked and found ourselves wandering in a sea of travel trailers. It took some time to find the crew from Van City, but, once we did, we sat under a tent to fill out the papers and hand over a check. It was really anticlimactic. We wandered around and looking at trailers we were never going to buy.

So what did we order? The Unity is based on a Mercedes Sprinter chassis. It’s twenty-five feet one inch long and it has two living areas inside. It features a larger-than-queen-size murphy bed, a full bath and a decent kitchen with a sink, two-burner stove and a convection/microwave oven. The interior woodwork is Chesnut Cherry, the kitchen and bathroom countertops are white corian and the upholstery is a light off-white called ‘Fog”. The interior manages to be both bright and warm and it feels far more spacious than its length suggests. Pictures and more details will be coming. Oh boy, will they be coming!

Later that night we celebrated with a visit to Insomnia Cookies on Washington Avenue, a hole-in-the-wall place that sells warm cookies, milk and ice cream. They also make ice cream sandwiches out of the cookies and ice cream and they deliver. Until 3AM! While I was inside ordering, Carolyn found herself parked behind the delivery driver. She has never been so tempted to mug someone in her life. We got a six pack of cookies and two pints of low-fat milk. Yes, low-fat because we know how to party!

We are back at home. We still have a lot of down-sizing to do, and a lot of work on the house. There are many, many decisions to be made, some of them incredibly difficult. We will still give ourselves time to dream about the future, but for now, we’ve put our Clark Kent glasses back on, hung up our capes and returned to our normal lives.

Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

This week we decided to skip the fireworks and instead ran away for a few days to Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, located near Lexington, Kentucky for some rest and relaxation.  Shaker Village is about 30 minutes away from Lexington but is truly worlds apart.  Set in the rolling hills near Harrodsburg, Pleasant Hill is a beautifully preserved Shaker settlement dating to 1805.  You can visit for the day or like us, stay overnight.  We stayed three nights in the East Family Dwelling, one of the residences that housed 40-60 shaker men and women,  and we ate at the Trustee’s Table, the onsite restaurant located in the Trustee’s building.  In addition to visiting Pleasant Hill, we also went hiking on a small portion of the 40 miles of trails around the village, took in a bourbon distillery tour with a tasting and because we just could not get enough, on the way home, we visited the South Union Shaker settlement outside of Bowling Green, KY.  We had a wonderful time, learned a lot, ate well and recharged.  For Lee, Pleasant Hill is a wonderful place for photography, in particular, for studies in symmetry.  There is more to tell than will fit in a single post, so today I will focus on our time at Shaker Village and what makes it a great place to visit.

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The Meeting House was the center of worship for the community and it’s where the two elders and two eldresses lived separate from the rest of the community.

A Paper Thin Slice of Shaker History

Why were they called Shakers?  They danced, swayed and spoke in tongues during services, so they were referred to as the “Shaking Quakers” which then was shortened to Shakers.  While the name started as an insult, the Shakers adopted the name for themselves.

The three cornerstones of Shaker faith were Confession (members confessed to their Elders and Eldresses), Communalism (all property was community property) and Celibacy (all members signed a pledge of celibacy upon joining). Simplicity was woven into all facets of their lives and was a living practice of their faith that ran through their work, their cooking and their worship.  They were early conservationists, reusing and re-purposing their materials.  The Shakers were also pacifists, which caused difficulties during the Civil War as both the North and South distrusted them.

The Shakers were progressive innovators and scientific farmers.  They were skilled artisans and ran thriving business selling seeds, brooms and other goods.  They had running water before the White House did and had one of the first water towers in Kentucky.  They believed in racial equality and accepted African American members as early as 1811. They also believed in the duality of God and the absolute equality of men and women.  Each settlement was led by two men and two women equally.  Within each settlement, the community was separated into “families” of 40 – 60 men and women who lived together (yet separately) in a “family dwelling” where they lived and worshipped together.  Each house had an Elder and an Eldress who led the family.  The Community leaders were composed of two male and two female trustees who lived and worked separately from the rest of the community.  At its height, Pleasant Hill had over 500 members before eventually dwindling down.

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One of the Shakers most profitable businesses was selling seeds. They pioneered selling seeds in envelopes which made them easy to ship and to stock in stores all over the country.

The information above is just the tiniest sliver of background, and it leaves out huge swaths of Shaker history and belief, so while there is simply no way to do justice to the history of the Shakers here, I have added a couple of links below for anyone who would like to explore more about them.  The Maine Shakers site in particular has free ebooks written by and about Shakers, so that you can experience their history from their perspective.

www.shakervillageky.org

http://www.southunionshakervillage.com/

http://maineshakers.com/free-shaker-school/

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East Family Dwelling, built in 1817. Men entered through the East door and women through the West door. Notice our cat guardian sitting in front of the west door.

Our Stay

Pleasant Hill Shaker Village is the best preserved of the Shaker settlements, with over 2800 acres of land and 30 buildings remaining.  They offer accommodations in the very buildings that the Shakers lived and worked which appealed mightily to us.  On this trip, Lee and I stayed in the East Family Dwelling, which was the first of the family houses built by the Pleasant Hill Shakers.  Our spacious and very comfortable room would have once slept three or four Shakers, but we had a king sized bed all to ourselves.  Most of the furnishings are Shaker in design.  Many people who have never heard of the Shakers themselves, have heard of Shaker furniture, where form and function meet in perfect harmony creating simple, yet elegant furnishings.  The floors are hard wood, with area rugs, and the room had plenty of natural light with windows that overlooked the working farm.  We had a private bath with all of the amenities you would expect including nice toiletries and thick fluffy towels. Our building was open to visitors during the day, then limited to overnight guests in the evenings. At night you are well guarded by the two resident cats, who are friendly and who appreciate bacon the way God intended.  Prices are very reasonable overall and rooms are priced by size and bed configuration.  There are discounts in the restaurant and shops for overnight visitors.

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Distinctive Shaker oval boxes in the Welcome Center gift shop.

The shops are well curated with a variety of shaker and shaker inspired items.  In addition to hats, scarves, hurricane lamp shades, spices, tea, seeds, pictures, skincare products (the same as are in your room), books, toys and more, you can also buy some shaker furniture pieces.

Things to Do

The main activities revolve around the history of Shaker Village, and include tours, educational programs, horseback riding, wagon rides, boat rides and hiking.  At 4:30 each day, you can watch the ducks parade off to bed, which is adorable.  There is live music on weekends and plenty of special events throughout the year including a juried craft show, trail runs and food festivals.  There are 40 miles of trails, ranging from moderate to strenuous in difficulty and from 3 – 6 miles long.  There is also a waterfall that is a short hike from the west lot and totally worth the effort.  We stayed there for a long time just soaking in the beauty and serenity.

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Fulling Mill waterfall

Once you have had enough peace and serenity, head to Lexington.  The drive alone is worth it for scenery.  You are also within striking distance of several distilleries on the bourbon trail and if you like horses, they are everywhere, and there is even a horse theme park.  On your way into Lexington, take a quick side jaunt towards Versailles (sounds like vir – sales, not like vir-sigh) and drive by the ginormous castle.

Food

There are two on-site options for food, the restaurant in the Trustee’s house, and the take-out selection in the craft shop.

The Trustees house contains The Trustee’s Table a farm to table restaurant that serves breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Breakfast is of the hearty country sort, a buffet with eggs, bacon, sausage, grits, sausage gravy, fried apples and an assortment of healthier items including fruit from the farm.  With breakfast, a basket of biscuits and pumpkin muffins were served.  Hearty is the descriptor here.

Lunch is completely different.  An assortment of sandwiches, salads and some shaker dishes, including fried chicken, make their appearance, along with a bowl of coleslaw and a basket of corn muffins. A variety of deserts are available, but the one you want to try at least once is the Shaker lemon pie.  It is a shaker dish that perfectly encapsulates the Shaker ethos of wasting nothing while being exceptionally delicious.

Dinner.…oh my…such happy memories.  Our first night there they debuted their summer menu and it was mouthwatering.  We had such a good experience the first night that we changed our plans and came back the second night to try more dishes.  The stand outs were: cold cucumber and buttermilk soup; bourbon peach barbecued chicken with warm fingerling potato salad; seared Idaho trout with lemon butter over a warm sorghum salad (scrumptious) with garden vegetables; and the pork chop with polenta, braised red cabbage and a miso maple pan sauce.  All dinners included a relish bowl from the garden and yeast rolls, as if you needed to eat anything else.  A stand out in desert was the sour cream panna cotta with a butter rum sauce served in a jelly jar.  I may have licked the jar.

If you are looking for picnic supplies for your hike, stop by the craft shop, where there are sandwiches, side salads and baked goods that you can pick up and take on the trail.  The cucumber, tomato and corn salad with a light vinaigrette was a standout, as was the super fudgy brownie.

Who should visit?

I think this is a great place for everyone to explore at least once, but in particular,

  • Families – This is a great day trip place for children, with many programs related to the farm animals. They bring out animals during the day for some of the programs, and the parade of ducks heading off to bed is simply adorable.
  • Photographers –Good shots are everywhere. Just before dawn is magic time.
  • Couples – This is a great place to reconnect as a couple. It is peaceful and gentle and oddly romantic.
  • Family reunions – There is plenty of room for large groups, and the family houses have comfortable common spaces with couches and chairs.
  • Church or business retreats – There are plenty of meeting facilities, and no one will go away hungry. There are many room configurations for all kinds of groups.
  • History lovers – This is the mother-load of historical experiences. Stay overnight, take all of the program tours and then go to South Union Shaker village for a completely different experience.
  • Architecture Lovers – The buildings will make you happy. Explore them all, especially the Trustees house and the Meeting House.  Take the Preservation tour. Stay overnight and walk the village after dark for a whole new experience.
  • Horse Lovers – They have stables, horses and riding paths. Horses have the right of way over pedestrians and cars.
  • Nature Lovers – You will be very happy here. The rolling hills are stunning.  The hikes are enjoyable and the water fall is lovely.  A full grown deer leapt out of the woods right in front of us on our hike, and we are pretty sure we spotted a really big mink plus bunnies, squirrels and a huge variety of singing birds.

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This bowl of lemons is always on the agenda for a yearly photography workshop.

Conclusion

If I sound like we are a bit in love with Shaker village, it is because we are.  The scenery, food, activities and history combine to make a place that is absolutely worth seeking out for a day for a long weekend.  If you have family that go to University of Kentucky, consider ditching the big box hotels and stay a bit further out.  The character and experience are like no other we have found.

Cheers!

Long-Delayed Gratification – Exploring Saint Louis

St Louis is often called a fly-over city.  People fly over it on their way to one coast or another.  For us, it was more of a drive through state.  For years we have driven past it on our way to other places with no time to stop and explore. Sadly, we had no idea what to see beyond the arch which stands in front of the city as you cross the Mississippi. To our credit, we did try, but our first attempt to explore the city was cut short by an emergency back in Nashville.  But, that trip gave us our first tantalizing glimpse of what St. Louis has to offer and we knew we wanted to see more.  Finally, we have had the opportunity to explore this wonderful city full of beautiful architecture, incredible history, great food and welcoming people.

What drew us to St. Louis this time was Van City’s 48th Anniversary celebration which was an opportunity for us to talk to a representative from the Leisure Travel Van factory and ask them the questions we’ve been writing down since the Florida RV Super Show which was our only opportunity to see the entire line of RV’s in person. It was also a chance to ask the dealer specific questions about the order process.  Once we were done there, it was time to explore.

Where we Stayed

Our AirBnB was located in a neighborhood called Tower Park South, named for Tower Grove Park a huge green space that forms its northern boundary. The park and the adjacent Missouri Botanical Gardens were originally part of a much larger estate. The owner gave these two tracts of land to the city specifying that they remain parks and to this day Tower Grove Park remains the only park in the city with an independent board.  The neighborhood south of the park is full of brick homes that were mostly constructed after the street car lines were expanded from downtown in the mid-19th century. The main thoroughfare, Grand Avenue, is a broad street lined with an enticing, multicultural mix of restaurants and shops.  We absolutely LOVE this neighborhood.  the architecture of the homes on the tree lined streets made for an interesting driving conundrum, as all we wanted to do was look at the houses and not the street.  Pro tip – walk the neighborhood, don’t drive.  Also, pack your parallel parking skills.

Where We Ate

You cannot go wrong eating on Grand Avenue.  Since it was dinnertime Friday when we arrived, we made our way to a vegetarian restaurant on the corner of Grand Avenue and Connecticut Street, called The Treehouse, where we had what I can only describe as vegetarian comfort food. This was not rabbit food.  I had a very rich mushroom risotto finished with olive oil and goat cheese (vegetarian doesn’t mean light) along with a glass of Rosé and Carolyn had a mushroom ravioli also finished with goat cheese. Dessert was olive oil cake with a rosewater glaze that was like pound cake with the texture of cornbread with hints of olive oil and roses. It was a perfect late spring dinner, though we both needed an after-dinner walk!

Ikea – Don’t judge.  Swedish Meatballs are a requirement. Vegetarian ones, not so much. The salmon, however, is always a good choice.

Mango on Washington Avenue – Mango is a Peruvian restaurant a few blocks away from the City Museum. And, while the City Museum has a restaurant on the roof, once we learned their specialty was nachos we decided to look for something different. A decision that paid off in spades.

Because we didn’t have a reservation we sat at the bar where our server was incredibly friendly and helpful. She guided us through the menus and answered our questions along the way. In fact, everyone we talked to was wonderful and the restaurant is in a beautiful space.

Grapefruit Smash with Plantain Chips and Salsa
Pisco Sour

After a Grapefruit Crush, a couple of Pisco Sours and plantain chips with fresh bright green salsa we ordered Anticuchos; a trio of skewers, one chicken, one beef, and one beef heart. They were delicious and the tangy sauce with them was an amazing accompaniment. We followed that by splitting the main course, Pescado a lo Macho, a hearty dish of roasted fish with mussels, calamari, octopus and shrimp in a rich and spicy red aji rocoto (a type of pepper) sauce served over rice and potatoes. It was amazingly flavorful with just the right amount of spicy heat. We were really glad we had split the entrée because it would have been too much for one.

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Anticuchos

Sunday Brunch at Rooster. Also located on Grand Avenue, they specialize in crepes, sandwiches, and breakfast/brunch items. I guess we should have thought about it being Father’s Day. We waited close to an hour for a table and once we were seated service was incredibly slow. Overall, it felt like the restaurant should have had half the number of tables it did. Coffee arrived lukewarm, the food took a very long time and the restroom facilities were totally inadequate to the number of guests. The food, however, was absolutely delicious. Carolyn had an egg white scramble with marinated chicken served over roasted potatoes and I had a spiced black bean crepe filled with egg whites, a little white cheddar and salsa. Basically, a quesadilla in a crepe instead of a tortilla. We finished by having a crepe filled with Nutella and topped with bananas because we cannot go to a crepe place without getting a Nutella crepe. I don’t make the rules, just sayin… We were both very happy with the food and we didn’t mind the leisurely experience because we didn’t have a deadline to meet. But, it’s something to keep in mind if you go.

What We Did

Ikea – After we spent Saturday morning at Van City, we made our requisite pilgrimage to IKEA, something we always do if we are in a city that has one. Ikea broke our hearts recently by first announcing they were coming to Nashville and then announcing they weren’t, but it is simply impossible to stay mad at moderately priced home furnishings with that dash of Swedish awesomeness. Having just climbed around the insides of our dream RVs with a tape measure, I really wanted to see what kinds of storage container options I could find.  There is no such thing as a quick trip to Ikea. Park in the garage to keep your car cool.

Photo Safari – After dinner at Mango on Saturday, the sun was just beginning to set and I wanted to get a photo of the arch before the light was gone so we walked to Keiner Plaza Park for the view of the Old Courthouse with the arch directly behind it. There was a festival going on in the park which made getting photos a bit of a challenge as I had to shoot in between groups of people taking selfies with the arch behind them. After getting a few photos and listening to music we made our way back up Washington utterly in love with the architecture.

The City Museum!!!!! – We learned that the City Museum is open until midnight on Saturdays.  This seemed odd for what we were told was a children’s museum.  Let me state for the record, the City museum is great for children, but it is even better for adults.

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The City Museum

Arriving at the City Museum we paid the admission and went straight to the 10th floor so we could be on the roof for sunset. It was our first taste of the magical wonderland (on acid) that is the City museum. The roof is a garden with water tanks, strings of lights, a school bus perched precariously over the corner of the building, a pond and lots of places for children (and some adults) to climb and explore built from recycled materials. The center of the roof is dominated by the ten story slide that starts on top of the building’s cupola then disappears through the roof into the building. There is a long spiral walkway around the cupola dome that takes you to the entrance of the slide and also gives you a phenomenal view of downtown and the roof-top ferris wheel! After the sun set we made our way back to the first floor to begin exploring the museum.

I honestly have no words that can do the City Museum justice. You HAVE to see it and spend time exploring everything it has to offer. It’s a post-apocalyptic Willie Wonka landscape built with the same glee I used to have as a kid building forts in the backyard out of my family’s discarded items. We explored caves, visited an aquarium that you exit through the mouth of a whale and even went to the circus at nine o’clock at night! Every place you look there is something magical to see. Even the floors are covered in colorful and imaginative mosaics and the occasional sculpture.

The entire museum makes extensive use of recycled materials including buses, airplanes, construction equipment, metal printing plates, building materials and even whole buildings! All put together in imaginative ways. There are restaurants and bars for the adults, and there are galleries displaying monumental salvaged architectural details some of which are rented out for events like the wedding reception that was going on during our visit. The gallery graphic panels celebrate architects like Louis Sullivan, who designed the first skyscraper and mentored a young Frank Lloyd Wright, while the labels remind you that the magical surroundings come at the cost of beautiful old buildings that have been demolished.

In addition to the roof there is also an outdoor area on the 3rd floor featuring a jet and elevated walkways that kids of any age can climb around in. There is also an art space where anyone can do craft projects. After several hours, we lifted our jaws off the floor, where they’d been since we entered, and hobbled out to the car, happy and exhausted. My advice is, when you go, be prepared to be there for hours and wear comfortable shoes! You will not believe the amount of things to see and do! Pro Tip:  After 5PM on Friday and Saturday, the price of admission goes down to $12 per person.  Since it is open to Midnight, you will get plenty of value for your money.

We have just barely scratched the surface of St Louis. There are loads of public art, festivals, the Budweiser factory (with the Clydesdales!) a stellar botanical garden and, of course, a zoo. They also have a wonderful farmer’s market and good food is all around.

Leaving a place after having so much fun is always a bit difficult and we were simply blown away by our visit. If we were looking for a city to settle down in, St. Louis would be high on our list. It has a long and interesting history and friendly people. Our list of things to see on our next trip is incredibly long, now. We will definitely go again. And, you should, too.