Lewis and who?

For the title of this, today’s installment, M suggested the following - Jesus, Mary, and a Painted Prairie Dog.  It’s accurate, but I told him we couldn’t use it.  He acknowledged that he might be a bad man, but it did describe what we saw today.  I’ve decided to go with this - as meaning no offense, yesterday we saw a 30 ft bull statue.  Today we saw a 30 ft Mary, a 33 ft Jesus, and a 4 foot tall fiberglass prairie dog.

30 ft Mary

Look out Cow Parade      

Giant Jesus

But we really started our day with errands.  Well, no, we started our day with breakfast, which for the first time I think in our history we ate at the hotel.  But it was decent… and clean… Okay, let me clarify this.  I’m not trying to say we don’t stay in clean hotels.  We certainly try hard to do this and our odd are pretty good. (There was one horrible one in Western PA who refunded us, but mostly they’ve been good.)  Still…  in the lobby of a hotel that puts out breakfast one generally hopes for okay - not good.   It’s sort of like McD’s.    This was much better than that.  While I’m on this idea and putting a foot in my mouth, the whole region seems a lot cleaner than home. 

But this is not a train of thought I wish to pursue and I was hoping this post would be more coherent than yesterday’s with my few hours of sleep and up for 23 hours… yup I counted.  This might be the first trip where my writing improves as we go on and I get LESS tired.

So we started our day with errands.  How does one have errands on vacation you ask?  Well, the space bags are one of the best things since sliced bread and EZ-pass, but to be fair, we don’t bring certain items with us.  Like shampoo and other large bulk things.,  We pick them up on arrival.  And those of you who follow our adventures may also remember - we don’t take home everything ourselves either,  The USPS or UPS kindly delivers our laundry to our door step.  So since we were in the area of malls and every chain store you can think of we also got a mailing/laundry box, etc.  so now the errands are out of the way.

After our errands we drove thru town to our second must see on this journey,..,. The giant Mary.  Mary is located in Trinity Heights a spiritual garden and condo community.  When you enter, you pass a bronze statue of a the Archangel Michael  killing a dragon - as you drive up the hill you pass condos.  One was for sale, but I don’t know the cost.  At the top of the hill there is a gift shop and in-door attraction of a wooden carving of the last supper.  Both were closed when we were there, but there is also the giant Mary, a small St Frances, multiple small Mary’s of various locales, and the giant Jesus.   The giant Mary was definitely worth seeing.  But we did not hang out too very long.  Thus far, the weather is hot.  HOT.  Very, very hot.  But while we were there I did see the weirdest coolest bees.

C D B

(I forgot a Saxton Bee, sorry guys.  We’ll get a picture for the ‘brary regardless.)  The weird cool bee M. got a picture of and thankfully he didn’t mind the paparazzi because this was a very SERIOUS creature.  It’s front half is yellow striped like a yellow jacket.  It’s head is orange looking and it’s tail part is long cone shaped, black and pointy.  Thinking about it - it resembles the patches I’ve seen of Sea Bees.  The insect was about an inch and half long.  Very impressive and I bet has a wicked sting.  This I hope not to confirm.

With it only being 11 am and nothing opening until 1, we took the round about way thru the neighborhoods of the city to drive across town.  (Across town is not very far,)  While the landscape here is hilly- with large flat plateaus in between, the hilly wooded parts remind me of home.  The architecture is very different.  Lower and mostly brick.  The “ordinary” house here is square (vs. rectangle back home) and only one story,

Across town we went into a park that made it’s way up a bluff.  It was on the Lewis and Clark trail and I can say with great confidence it would not have been an easy trek by foot.  Let’s just say it reminded me more of WV than I was comfortable with:  narrow road, switch backs, nice steep drop off the road where there was no guardrail etc.  But there were look out spots with amazing panoramic views of forever,

I’ve learned a lot about L&C in the past few days.  Unfortunately, the more I learn the less I like them.  Perhaps this is even more sacrilege for the historians out there, but I find I just can’t get interested in them.  They seem like jerks and I just can’t seem to care about their journey.  Consequently, by the time we got to the L&C Interpretive center - I was more interested in the bronze animal statues out front and the Missouri River that runs along side it.

We did go into the Sergeant Floyd River Museum and Welcome Center - a dry docked river inspection ship.  You could go thru the three floors, see a lot of models of river boats and various L&C and local artifacts.  That was neat.  I wouldn’t mind being on a river boat. 

The Beach

Okay not really the beach - the Missouri River

After this river front excursion we went deeper into the city and after driving around the 5 block radius we decided there was no lunch, we’d just go to the Public Museum.  We figured this would be a quick excursion.

It was a quick excursion, BUT it is also a very, very good museum.  It was very full - lots of little local artifacts that relay the history of the area:  meat packing where you can see statues of farm animals and interactive diagrams of cuts of meat, (I had a stake in this one too.)  An old 1918 Mac ladder, fire truck - looked fun, though not efficient.  A lot of corn facts, pieces of the wreckage from the famous 1989 plane crash.  Deep Purple memorabilia.   A teepee. My favorite item - an iron lung machine (I always wanted to see one and am now happy that I don’t have to visit a medical museum to do so. )  The Public Museum was small, but very packed and they managed to take things, which were not really all that interesting and make them interesting to look at.  No small task.  And they do it all for donation - no entrance fee.

I’ve often found on these jaunts of ours that it’s the smallest museums that are the coolest. This was no exception and if ever in the neighborhood - I’d recommend it.,  We told the nice ladies at the desk that we thought the  place was very cool and after learning we were from CT, they were thrilled.  Apparently people from CT are experts in museum display.  Truly thrilled,  Odd, but it was nice that we could make them so happy.

Hot and starving, but with limited time, we considered walking a few blocks to the movie theater - the only other thing we found open, to get lunch,  But that just seemed wrong and the only other thing to see in town was the art museum a block away,   Deciding we were tough, we’d just go see art and not eat, we walked thru the heat to the art museum.

Upon arrival I wasn’t sure this was the best of decisions, but the fates were with us.  They had just opened their café yesterday.  We had a delightful lunch and felt much better.

We probably could have made it with out lunch as this museum was smaller than the last.  In fact, it might be the smallest I’ve ever seen - smaller than Uconn’s even.  But it too was worth the trip.  Local artist with a few examples of  various styles and periods were memorable,  Best of all though was a piece on loan from a local attorney’s office.  It was of a pregnant Asian woman sitting on a hammock.  Her feet are bare and she wears black pants and an orange shirt.  From afar she looks almost real, up close you realize she is made of cast glass and some parts were painted with oil paint.    The other impressive piece was a photograph of a fire - it must be a plains fire as it looked like the shore - waves breaking against the beach, but the waves were flame.  Impressive.

With the heat and still not feeling fully recovered, we have returned to room, made our plan for tomorrow and I expect to be asleep before sun down.  It’s odd - the sun seems to come up later and go down later here,  Regardless - when the sun is up - with all the sky it’s very bright.

It will be interesting to see if this holds as we head west.

From yesterday:

An example of the barn quilt project.

My friend Albert. (The bull)

Greetings from Iowa.