okra: End of the Road

I'm so tired today, a good sort of tired. Yesterday was a long day, but a fun end to our St. Louis road trip. We started out at the St. Louis zoo. We almost didn't go, because we had seen it so many times, but I'm glad that we went. They have a new penguin exhibit that allows you to get very close to the penguins. It was really cool, though I do see that without any supervision how that could be bad for the penguins. I think that there might be too much temptation to try to touch them or feed them. I overheard "can we feed them?" more than once, as if that is even a question! Yikes. At least I did not observe anyone actually feeding them. You can get very good view of the penguins, which is aided by their own curiosity and outgoing personalities. They would routinely come right up to the low glass railing and look out at and interact with the crowd. They even stick their beaks out, through the spaces between the glass panels. I found this out accidentally, trying to take a picture... I got a crazy right-up-the-penguin-beak shot as it bit my lens. So, yeah, don't try that please. It was a cute/scary ultimate for sure.

{Watch out! There is some serious ouch potential here.}

{So stately.}

{Looking out at his audience.}

We also rode the tiny zoo train, which was really pretty lame. We got a great view of fences, leafless trees, dead plants, and the parking lot. It really reminds one of what a wasteland Missouri is in the winter. Aren't you supposed to see animals while on the zoo train? I did snap this photo, though.

{While we were waiting for the train, we saw this sleepy bear getting up from a nap.}

After the zoo, it was off to visit the giant Crate and Barrel that we spotted while driving back to the hotel from Whole Foods. Oh, lordy, it was awesome. My favorite is probably the kitchen gadgets wall, but I also like looking at all of the varieties of serving plates (especially the little mini plates, like sauce dishes, etc.). I did buy a very reasonably priced soy sauce decanter. It is a very pretty green that matches the red and green Ikea tray I keep on my kitchen table. It's like a tiny souvenir of the giant Crate and Barrel.

Since we were so close to Whole Foods, we went there again. Keith went straight for the Bison chili. I got some grilled tofu, potatoes, tomato bisque soup, and greens. I also treated us to some mini fruit tartlets for dessert. We then departed for the highway, but had one last stop on the way out. At Keith's request, we stopped at Dave and Buster's to play some games. Man, that place is HUGE. We'd been to the one in San Diego, but this one was much bigger. Still, oddly enough, they didn't have Skee Ball. ??

We got home in the early evening, to some very happy kitties. When we went to Target on Sunday, we also stopped by the Pet Smart and got some kitty toys and a new scratcher for Mao Mao. Luca went crazy over the new toy mice. We did some unpacking (for example, I had to put my new drawer organizers to use, couldn't stand to wait) before heading off to bed. The cats were sooo happy to snuggle up to us.