In Middle America

I just returned from a week in Belleville, Illinois, to visit my daughter Andria and two grandkids. Her husband Dave is on a six week training in Virginia. We made three trips into St. Louis, MO. This post does stray from my usual nature blog, but we did do quite a few nature activities, plus, I haven't posted for quite awhile.

The Saint Louis Zoo is one of the finest, as far as zoos go. It is also free! Here, Nora and Soren touch the sting rays and horseshoe crabs.

Below, I enjoyed these wild and free animals that visit the zoo.

A common grackle hanging out at our lunch table...

with a "St. Louis" cardinal.

Some evenings we caught fireflies to bring into the house for the night, and would turn them loose in the morning. They are actually beetles.

We also went to the Science Museum. They had an enclosed freeway overpass where you could look right down on the traffic through port holes and also clock vehicle speeds with radar guns.

There were several display cases of space memorabilia which I was drawn to after seeing Megan Prelinger's book on the subject.

On Father's Day, my surprise was a trip to "The Tie Dyed Iguana" in Belleville. It was a very clean reptile store that is about the only place in town with a refreshing hint of counter culture.

The counter had an interesting collection of stickers such as, "If you remember Dead Tour you weren't there."

Nora bought some night crawlers to put in a habitat we made from a gallon juice jug. Unfortunately, we put in too much compost, which got really active and cooked the worms. We had to recompost the whole mess two days later. Biospheres are tricky business, to say the least.

OK, below we have the awesome and unique "City Museum" in St. Louis. Over a number of years, about 20 artists converted an old shoe factory into a very tactile kind of art piece made of found objects in industrial St. Louis. Kids and grownups can hurdle down three story fire escape slides, climb through webs of welded steel to considerable heights, and crawl through dark tunnels that come up in various unexpected places. It is too much to describe - you have to see it and experience it.

This was my first look from the parking lot. Yes, that is a school bus teetering on the roof.

This is the entryway. Everything you see is made of recycled objects.

Here, Nora braves crossing a "pool of acid."

You could climb through steel webs to get to two airplanes. It is a little scary as some of the gaps seem just a little too big, and there are places you know kids could hang themselves on. On the City Museum's website, they have a section on "frivolous" lawsuits.

Putting faith in artist/builders.

The four of us had the ball pit to ourselves where we enjoyed pummeling each other.

This wall was made out of bottles.

That is quite a vault door!

We walked through this giant kaleidoscope...

and felt like pet rats on this wheel we turned by walking (and crawling).

Nora exploring inside a giant Slinky.

Here we feed the kids to the sharks. Actually, we are traveling through an underwater tube in the shark tank. That is a sea turtle by Soren's foot. Well, that does it for now.