Pukes on a Plane

Lydia's family is endearing and funny because they want to see Ernie like every minute he's in town. They want to drive to the airport just to wave at you while you walk to the entrance with your luggage. My family is more understated I think. They'll visit with you for a few hours then will go home.

So with that in mind we still had a family social calendar for today despite needing to pack up the St. Louis airbnb and deal with the flight home.

I think some of them met up at the park before this while I packed. Then we all met up at City Foundry STL for some lunch. This place is one of the few things about St. Louis that I am a little jealous of. It's a former industrial site that they've renovated and turned into a very cool eat/work/play type of joint. I think it even has a music venue in there somewhere that I haven't yet had the pleasure of exploring. The food area is cool because it's packed full of fun little food truck-esque establishments that you can peruse.

Lambert Airport has some decent playground equipment shaped like planes and trains and stuff. I think there's even a little thing where a kid can load pretend luggage into the plane. Airport playgrounds are one of those things I never spared a thought about and now that I have a baby are suddenly pretty important places in my life.

THAT PLANE IS HEADED STRAIGHT FOR THE ARCH

I this this is the face he made when we told him to stop chewing on the flight safety card.

One minute he was chill the next minute he was throwing up on everyone. Bad things aren't allowed to happen to me, however, and so I was outside of the blast radius. Everyone else shed a layer of pukey clothing.

City Foundry Food Hall

I left Springfield, IL and was back in St. Louis in time for dinner.

City Foundry is an awesome bright spot in St. Louis' midtown neighborhood. From their website:

"Almost 100 years ago, the Century Electric company purchased the Midtown St. Louis property now known as City Foundry STL. At the time, Midtown was a manufacturing hub for the city, thanks to its proximity to the Wabash Railroad line, which cuts across the City Foundry STL Property.

Century Electric was one of the top 3 manufacturers in the city, manufacturing motors and generators that were sold internationally. In fact, Century’s motors helped spark the development of small household appliances.

While the foundry changed owners over the years, and the products produced there changed, one thing did not: nearly 24-hour-a-day work continued on the site until 2007.

Today, this 15-acre site is being reimagined as City Foundry STL, with first-to-the-area makers and merchants moving to the complex. We can’t wait to for you to be a part of the next chapter of this storied creative complex."

The Food Hall opened after I moved away so I was excited to check it out and meet Zoe, Emily, and Blake for dinner.

It's a pretty impressive place and there are lots of different little restaurants to choose from.

MO Promises Made, MO Promises Kept

St. Louis' City Foundry really had some bad luck trying to open right around the time covid hit. They were pretty smart this time though and had a socially distanced craft fair in like an open air parking garage type space.

Spencer and Doug were in attendance.

Next we headed to Missouri Botanical Garden for their temporary exhibit Origami in the Garden.

There were giant origamis.

We completed our MO state park quest with a bang! Jay Nixon State Park is not only undeveloped/closed but it’s also unaccessible from the road! MO has a top notch park system and every park is free to visit.

And with that closed park, we had officially completed our holy quest to visit every state park and state historic site in Missouri within one year. We began on May 19 of last year so we even have a little time to spare.

Yes they had ice cream but I had visited General Custard's Re-Treat in Farmington, Missouri primarily for their pun game.

We did a little strolling around Farmington to walk off the custard. This flower shop looked like a moon base.