h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Mr. D, you and Mrs D are always welcome at my humble abode.

I've been to Bartlesville many times. One of my aunts lived there for most of my life. And I love to go to Woolaroc. We used to take the turnpike to the Vinita exit and then pick up 60.

Yea!!! I feel a mini-meet coming on.

Lady C is in Mt. Hope which is on 96 about half way between Wichita and Hutchinson.

Is St. Louis where the big arch is?

Right-O, Lil! It's a pretty interesting sight to cruise into town on I70 or I44 or come up on I55 and see that parabolic structure rising up into the city skyline.

Our two boys live over there. No. 1 Son, I----, works there and goes to college as time permits. He got married last September to a marvelous gal, A----, and are raising a fine young daughter, M----.

No. 2 Son, R----, goes to UMSL and bartends and does housing maintenance as a sideline. He's into archealogy and anthropology, and went on a dig near Lima, Peru, at the Temple of the Moon this last summer.

St Louis is an exciting little town of about 3 million people, in the city proper and the surrounding metropolitan area. The traffic can be a bugger at times, but you can usually find a way around it if you take an exit to skirt the stalls. Places of interest include:
Plenty of museums
The St Louis Science Center
The enormous St Louis Zoo
Lots of places to hear jazz or other music
The Botanical Garden (as Hypatia noted)
Touristy stuff like Union Station downtown (an indoor/outdoor train station historical themed mall)
The Butterfly House on the west side near Faust Park and the mall Cahokia Mounds historic Indian site
Ted Drew's Frozen Custard serves up 'concrete'
Forest Park (site of the World's Fair in 1904)
The Gateway Arch (who could forget the US's westward expansion?)
An Historic Aircraft Restoration museum
The Scott Joplin Museum
Kemp Auto Museum
The Old Cathedral (Basilica of St. Louis, King of France)
Memorials for Lewis & Clark and of Sacajawea
The St. Louis Mercantile Library at UMSL
SayersBrook Bison Ranch
The World Aquarium at City Museum
Frank Lloyd Wright House in Ebsworth Park
Dozens of wineries and microbreweries

All this and more can be found at:
http://www.explorestlouis.com/attractions/results.asp?Section=2&PageType=4),&expand=242

B4igetelected2headuptheplanningforaMeet

"Cahokia Mounds historic Indian site" should have been given due status on its own line of text. Sorry for the botched cut'n'paste job.

B4myeditorsmacksmyhandswitharuler

Emee, we have lived in the same house, same small town for over forty years. We go to Hutch occasionally, but do most of our shopping in Wichita. We are now fifteen minutes from a good shopping area in Wichita. It takes a bit longer to get to Hutch.

As Hyp already told you, our aunt lived in Bartlesville for many years. Her husband and his twin brother owned the IGA store downtown by the tower built by Frank Lloyd Wright. We had many good times in Bartlesville. Woolaroc was always a favorite place to go and close enough to us for a day trip.

Hyp, you have eyeballs. Are you here?

I usually have eyeballs when I'm at work. That doesn't mean I'm actually here. I just leave it on all day.

Someday when I'm rich I'm going to pay for a River Meet. We'll start out in Kansas City and float down the Missouri River to the Mississippi, stopping in Jefferson City to tour the capitol building, which is really quite nice. In St. Louis we'll all go to a Cardinals game then charter one of the paddlewheelers and steam down to New Orleans. We might make a detour up the Ohio to Cincinnati to collect the vice president. We'll have barbecue in Kansas City then stop in Memphis for more barbecue. Should take about 10 days.

Ooh, a floating meet! How fun would that be!

Another fun place to have a meet would be Hannibal. There'd be enough there to fill up a day or two.

As for St Louis, when thinking of things that might be fun to do at a meet, it's worthwhile to note that after March for the next three (or more, heavy emphasis on the 'more') years most of highway 40 will be shut down for reconstruction. Traffic will be worse, and some things directly on highway 40 (like Forest Park) will be a little harder to access. There's lots of things to do that aren't on 40, though, and there's always Metrolink.

An idea for a southwest meet: there are lots of little towns on what's left of Route 66 that wouldn't be terribly expensive but would still offer some of the old attractions.

Must go add Hannibal to my list of 'things to write an entry on'

A floating meet! I might even show up! what we float on - Huck Finn style rafts or tubes or canoes or modern rafts...?

I rather fancy the Huck Finn raft. I think I even have a corncob pipe around somewhere.

Nope. I need my creature comforts. Not as young as I used to be. I am thinking of real boats.

Leo, you have always struck me more as the QE2 type than the raft type.

Oo, Tom's been talking off and on of wanting to do a road trip sometime, and Sedona would be (realistically, since driving direction sites never take into account pitstops and eating and such) a 2-3 days' drive--maybe less, since I *am* going to get my license this time, and I'll have to by April...

Of course, the best time for us would be summer, since I work for the school district, and it'd be a wee bit warm for a meet So never mind my waffling

*is annoyed she's not the Mrs. P referred to earlier, unless there's something she doesn't know about*

Hi Amy. Mrs. P is Phred's wife. They were going to try to make the London Meet on their way to Rome, but alas it isn't possible.

Does everyone like the idez of a meet somewhere in the Southwest, then? Sowe need to set a date. And an actual location. There are lots of great places in the Southwest. I'd love to see Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde.

If summer is the best time for the rest of you, then I'll try to make it. Summer is very busy for me at work, so it is always going to be hard for me to schedule vacation time. And since I'm taking 3 weeks off in April/May, it will be doubly hard. But it might be possible. Depending on how late in the summer.

Well, there goes my opportunity out the window...again. I've use up all my vacation time for a two-week stint at the end of June. A---- and I will attend a biblical teaching seminar (Advanced Class) in New Knoxville, Ohio, sponsored by our ministry headquarters. I'll be content to wait until next year, or do a mini-meet with Hyp and/or a few other 'locals' in MO.

B4theneighborrealizesI'musinghiswirelessinternetconnection

Would her majesty the ship fit on the Missourah river? I like swimming pools. (Though why anyone would need one while floating down a river I don't know...)

The river is much too shallow for a ship.

B4, perhaps you and A could join Lady C and me at RenFest in KC. Could even be a day trip.

Don't worry about scheduling anything for summer, unless it works best for someone else--I've just realized that there's no way we could afford the gas for that long a trip

If anyone wants to come up this way, though, and see lots of redwoods, we've a futon and a queen sized air mattress

Summer wouldn't be good for me (not that it should be anyone else's deciding factor), because we already have the first two weeks of August booked for our trip to Greece.

October might be nice, the leaves should start changing colors about then and would make for a nice drive. Arizona would probably be a little far for me to try and make in a weekend, too. Eastern New Mexico, maybe - Google maps tells me Tucumcari is about a 12 hour drive.

*Studies maps intensely*

I don't think I listened during Geography lessons when we reached US

So many meets are being planned. I'll try for the spring London meet and the Nordic meet in Lund, Sweden, at the 22nd of June. The Nordic researchers have been holding Milla to her half-promises of a house warming party after a rebuild of their house. .