Day 3: St Louis

Our plan for Wednesday was to spend an hour or two at the Rolling Hills Wildlife Adventure and then drive to St Louis (about 7 hours from Salina). I’m glad we decided to do that instead of trying the zoo on Tuesday afternoon, because even in the morning it was plenty hot. Luckily the zoo itself is extremely well-maintained and has plenty of shady trees and benches. Seriously, this place is in the middle of nowhere, but they must have amazing funding, because the animals were obviously well-cared for and the grounds were in spectacular condition. Something to be said for private funding, eh?

So! Let’s see some animals.

A wolf. He stared at us. The Bwun said, "Dog!"

A lion (two, actually). This guy was just purring, but it was LOUD! The Bwun was suprisingly uninterested, which isn't really a good thing for the second animal you see at the zoo.

Ring-tailed lemurs. You can at least see one in the picture, right?

A wallaroo (wallaby-kangaroo mix). I loved seeing him hop around.

A rhinoceros. These guys are BIG.

A giraffe. The Romgi was able to get his attention for this shot.

An orangutan. This was by far the Bwun's favorite - just sitting up against the glass eating some lettuce!

A cougar. You'll have to look closely on the right side, in the glare. Also note you can just barely see the Oeuf making a bump. P.S. My hair is not really that color orange.

Flamingos! Glad to see them perched so flamingo-ly.

The flamingos were our first and last stop at the zoo. It was a really great place, and I enjoyed getting to see so many fun animals in the middle of Kansas. Good start to the day.

Then we headed off for Missouri.

I took this great picture of the Kansas City skyline before the Romgi pointed out that now the camera's memory card was full and I wouldn't have time to delete anything before I missed taking a picture of the Welcome to Missouri sign. Oops.

Good thing the Romgi loves me a lot and was willing to stop at the Welcome Center to take a replacement picture, since I kind of missed the real sign...

You know what I’d like to tell you? That the rest of our day was uneventful. Partially true: we made it into St Louis without trouble; we got checked into our hotel room, which had a kitchenette and the Food Network; we had take-out from a Tex-Mex restaurant similar to Chevy’s; another hotel guest burnt their dinner and the fire alarm went off; several fire trucks came.

Oh yeah. That part isn’t uneventful.

The lights on the fire truck were much, much brighter than I would have guessed.

The Romgi and the Bwun made an adventure out of it as only optimistic people can. I stood off in the distance being grumpy.

At last the fire trucks went away and we got to go back inside. The Bwun had a hard time falling asleep, and when I’d reached my limit of hearing him scream and cry, I got him out of the crib and had him come lay down with me. I rubbed his back for about 90 seconds before he fell asleep. After that he promptly twisted and turned so that my choices were to fall off the bed or to go sleep on the couch. I picked the couch. Not my favorite night!