Heading south from wine country, our California exploration took us to the Bay Area. San Francisco was high up on our original list of cities to check out, closely followed by some of the slightly less expensive areas like Berkeley. Not surprisingly, environmental jobs abound in the area, so it’s a definite career possibility.
The Pacific Northwest is a place all to its own. Things are just a little different here. Case in point: coffee shacks. Every little town has at least one, if not a few, of these drive-thru gourmet coffee houses. They take over empty lots like weeds. They are delicious.
Vancouver, British Colombia: our only excursion outside the US on this trip. To be honest, we didn’t give it much forethought, but traveling into Canada was quite a change.
Our first destination in the state of Washington was Walla Walla, which, besides having a funny name, is home to some lovely wineries. We needed a place to break once more before hitting the west coast and as Walla Walla is about halfway between Butte and our next (yet to be set at the time, but on the west coast) destination, it seemed like a natural pick.
Pete was our official local tour guide in St Louis today. Our first destination across the river (our first crossing into MO) was the must-see St Louis arch, or properly named the Gateway Arch of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. It was much larger than I had anticipated. We went up to the top of the arch, 630 feet in all. We also went to the Westward Expansion museum in the basement, which was pretty neat. A small highlight of the day was buying our National Park Pass. Bring on America’s beauty!
We stopped at a Pub/Restaurant for lunch and tried out a St Louis specialty, toasted ravioli. Don’t let the “toasted” part fool you, these babies were deep fried and quite tasty.
After the arch, we went over to Forest Park, which was built for the 1904 World Fair. It’s a pretty nice park and we spent a few hours walking around the zoo. The animals were fun, but I had two entertaining child encounters as well. The first was a 4 or 5 yr old girl in the primate house who tapped on the glass and screamed out, “I can’t see your face, damn it!” Dad covered her mouth pretty quickly and looked quite embarrassed. Then as we were walking out, this 5 or 6 yr old boy randomly walked up and grabbed onto my leg. His mom comes running over and as we’re walking away I hear her scold him with, “Don’t hug strangers!” Children are funny animals.
~Liz
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