It's baseball season

We've been getting a large dose of baseball while visiting at Steve's. Daniel and Maciek are on a little league team that Steve coaches, Steve umpires several games per week at fields in the area. Sometimes it means an hour of travel, or more, just to get to the game. Many of the games are right in Mascoutah, so there is very little travel time. This coming week, Steve has tickets to a Cardinals game in St. Louis that he is taking us to. Sports, especially baseball, is important to Steve and the kids so we're getting a lot of it while here.

Yesterday we all went to St. Louis to the Grant Farm. This facility is owned by the Anheuser Busch people, and is quite a thing to see. The farm houses the breeding and training facilities for the Budweiser Clydesdale horses, has a museum and a natural setting-type zoo with lots of exotic animals. We spent one afternoon there, but could have easily been fully occupied for the entire day, or even longer. Pat and I will go there again the next time we are in the area.

As we have traveled through the upper tier of states since leaving Washington I've noticed that the type of roadkill you see along the highway changes slightly from state to state. Now, perhaps roadkill is not of any interest to you. That's OK. I only make the observation that you can kind of tell where you are by the type of roadkill you see. It's deer everywhere, but you can add skunks and badgers in Wisconsin and raccoons and opossums in Illinois.

It's apparent to me that many areas are cashing in on nature and their local arts community to attract tourists. It's a combination that works.

More in a few days.

Dave & Pat