St Louis Zoo and Westward

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At 7:30 AM Wednesday morning, our service technician walked out to our rig to bring it in for the emissions system recall. The part had arrived and it would take him an hour or two to replace it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as simple as replacing the part. He would also need to run several emissions tests that would take 3 to 4 additional hours. Knowing we had most of the day to kill, our plan was to head back over to St Louis to check out the zoo. Their zoo is actually free which seems rather unusual. But it is necessary to register online for an admission time - probably to keep visitor volume under control during COVID. We signed up for a 9 o’clock time which is when the zoo opens.

Since we would arrive nearly an hour prior to the zoo opening, we planned on exploring some of Forest Park where the zoo is located. This is a big park - 1300 acres. It more than 50% larger than NY’s Central Park. There are 30 miles of trails and lots of other attractions besides the zoo. In fact if we had more time to spend in the St Louis area, we could likely spend a couple days just exploring other venues with Forest Park like the Missouri History Museum, the St Louis Art Museum and the Planetarium. We settled to just head to the park’s Visitor Center. The woman working the desk suggested we could simply stay parked where we were and take the nice walk through part of the park. It was only about a mile to the zoo and it was a nice morning for a walk in the park. We strolled past some of the ponds and saw the beautiful Art Museum building from the path.

Tree in Bloom

Forest Park Pond

St Louis Art Museum

We arrived at the zoo at 9, so our timing was perfect. There was a very large crowd and we initially thought there was a line of people trying to get it. It took a couple minutes to realize they were all just waiting to enter as part of a tour group. The zoo is about 90 acres in size, so there is a lot of ground to cover. Like many zoos, it is divided into various areas. Our goal was to see as much as we could and hope that all the animals would cooperate and be visible as we went by. Entering from the north gate, we first headed to “The Wild”.  The bear was surprisingly active and wandered all around its enclosure. The penguins and puffins were fun to watch as well. There is a small gauge train that runs throughout the zoo. We didn’t buy tickets but did need to stop as it went by. The younger orangutans were thoroughly enjoying a bucket while the old one sat off to the side with some sort of burlap bag over his head. He looked like he was doing his morning meditation routine.

Bear Surveys the Crowd

Puffins

Choo-Choo

Orangutans at Play

Serious Meditation

The prairie dogs were quite active while the gorilla was barely visible in the rear of their area. The red pandas were just being brought some large bamboo limbs by a handler but they didn’t seem to be very interested in eating.

You Looking at Me?

Long Distance Gorilla View

Red Panda

So Cute!

Unfortunately the huge bird enclosure from the 1904 World’s Fair wasn’t open so we didn’t get a chance to walk thru it. The herpetarium was interesting except for a large group of school children visiting the building at the same time as us. Snakes aren’t Chris’ favorite but since they are all behind glass, she was willing to look in each exhibit and try to locate the often hidden creatures.

Hisssss

Odd Looking Frogs

The lemurs have possibly the best enclosure of all the animals here at the zoo. There are a couple of large fenced in enclosures with lots of trees and swings to play on. But something we haven’t seen before were the overhead tunnels that connected the larger enclosures. They really seemed to enjoy running thru the tunnels while visitors watched from below. .

Lemur Tunnels

Watching Visitors Below

The Red Rocks section of the zoo has a wide variety of animals from antelopes to zebras and includes some of the big cats. We spent a fair amount of time in this section taking it all in.

Zebras

Taking a Cat Nap

Ostrich

Kangaroos

We headed over to the River’s Edge area but passed by the gorilla enclosure again. This time he was out and about so I got a better picture. The anteater was really going after some rotted piece of wood. It wasn’t clear whether it was loaded with ants or not. The capybara was sort of cute even though it is just an oversized rodent. Two of the cheetahs could be seen in the distance and one of them was just repositioning itself to lay back down. The elephants were interesting to watch one of them was reaching high with its trunk to get the hay stashed high up in one of the trees. We could look right into its mouth as it put in lots of effort. At least the zookeepers make them work for their meals.

Gorilla Out and About

Anteater

Capybara

Cheetahs

Elephant

Reaching for Lunch

The butterfly house was loaded with lots of butterflies. One of the volunteers mentioned that a new batch is brought in weekly to replenish the stock. It took a bit of patience to get some good photos but I think it was worth the time.

Bright Coral

By now, we have spent four hours wandering around the zoo and the legs/feet were getting just a little bit tired. Since we still had the mile or so walk back to the car, we decide to call it a day and head out. We took a different path through Forest Park in order to see some of the other sights. The St Louis Zoo was a very enjoyable day trip.

We had gotten a call from the service department that our rig was ready to be picked up. The service guy had driven back out to the camping area and plugged us in so we didn’t need to rush back as long as we got there by 4:30 before the bulk of the crew left.
We had one more stop not far from Forest Park. The Cathedral Basilica of St Louis looked like a place we should check out. Construction started in 1907 and was completed in 1914. The outside of the cathedral is quite detailed and has twin spires on either side of the front entrance.

Cathedral Basilica of St Louis

Mosaic Overhead

The mosaic tile work is rather impressive on its vaulted ceilings. We slowly made our way thru the large interior. There is something to see in any direction we look. It doesn’t seem to have as much gold “bling” as the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on the campus of Notre Dame University but this place is still quite special. If you’re in the St Louis area, this might be worth a short visit just to reflect.

We made it back to the service center, paid our bill and got our keys so we could head on out. After hooking up the Jeep, we planned to drive across the Mississippi River and stop at an Elks Lodge just to the north of town. That way we wouldn’t need to deal with the morning rush hour traffic that we would encounter. We pulled out of the service center and got to the first stop light a half mile away. When the light turned green, I hit the accelerator but the rig didn’t really want to move. I barely made it up the slight grade and left hand turn to get over I-55. I knew something wasn’t right but we lucked out and there was a large truck stop on the opposite side of the expressway and was able to easily turn around and limp back into the service area. I described our problem and the service manager called up the guy that had last worked on the rig. We quickly guessed that the problem was with the transmission. He and I had both driven the rig on flat ground between the camping area and the service bay, but at low speed on level ground the issue was not noticeable. He checked the transmission fluid level and determined that when the other technician did the preventative maintenance, he likely only put in two of the required three gallons. It took him a few minutes to remedy the situation and I gave it another test drive with much better results.

The drive over from the service center to the Florissant Elks Lodge wasn’t all that far at just over 30 miles, but a phantom construction project had the two lanes of traffic merge into one only to discover both lanes were actually open. The lodge has a few 30 amp electric outlets on the end of their parking lot. We headed into the lodge to fill out their paperwork for traveling Elks and had a beer while we got a tour of their facility. The trustee we were talking with was trying to get us to stay a couple extra nights to be there for the big steak dinner but we already had reservations at a state park about 200 miles away an hour outside of Kansas City.

The next morning we drove from Florissant to Knob Noster State Park. We had booked a site for 2 nights about a week earlier. For awhile we were figuring we might need to cancel the reservation because of the additional service work on our rig, but we spent the anticipated 4 nights in the St Louis area just not at the locations we had expected. We had picked the state park because it looked like there might be some hiking trails in the area, but as it turned out, the weather wasn’t all that great and to a certain extent, we were in need of some down time after being tourists in St Louis. We did get one hike in at the park and drove to some of the surrounding counties to get a geocache or two.

Racoon Climbs a Tree

Sea of Flowers

Johnson County Courthouse

With our approach to Colorado coming through Nebraska, we needed to head northwest out of Knob Noster as we shoot for Omaha. It’s a bit more than 280 miles to get there so we wanted a place near the midpoint to break up the drive. There is an Elks Lodge in Cameron MO that has at least a 50 amp electric outlet. It would get us 113 miles out of the way so our drive to Omaha would be manageable.

We had a very windy drive to Cameron and by coming in on a Saturday afternoon, we thought there was a chance there would be some activity at the lodge but we weren’t ready for what was happening. As we crested the last hill prior to getting to the lodge, we saw a sea of vehicles near the lodge. It was predominantly pickup trucks with empty flat bed trailers. The ball fields next to the lodge easily had 50 truck/trailers and as we wandered around the back side of the lodge there were several dozen more!

Ballfields Next to Cameron Elks Lodge

We eventually found a lodge member working in the kitchen and he filled us in on what was transpiring. The lodge and another local group were sponsoring a big charity ride. But instead of motorcycles, it was ATVs. He said there were a couple hundred of them out for the ride and should be returning in the next couple hours. Then there was going to be a big dinner and raffles. The good news was since the participants were out, it was rather quiet and the front of the lodge where the outlet we wanted is located was actually empty. He came out to suggest where to park keeping our large and heavy rig out of the grassy areas where we might get stuck from the recent wet weather they experienced. I got us setup and since Chris was nursing a head cold and not feeling overly energetic, I plotted a route to find caches in the 4 surrounding counties. Before I got back, Chris texted me to say the ATVs were beginning to converge and I should get back quick to find a parking place. I was expecting a noisy evening, but many people loaded up their trailers and skipped the dinner. Even those that stayed left shortly after eating and the rest of the night was relatively quiet.

Celebration at Missouri Veterans Home

Next post, we will make it to Omaha. Chris will start to overcome her head cold and I will start with similar symptoms just a few days delayed.