Our Easter trip, Part I

So far, we've been on quite the Easter trip. Our first day, Saturday, we made good time to Memphis, had a fun visit to the fabulous zoo there, and visited our dear friend Mike Shelton and his ailing mother. We ducked in and out just before heavy rain and lightning moved into the area. But, as the picture above shows, the weather was warm, and Kenny, Beth, and Uncle Mike had a grand ol' time...

After this brief visit, we continued on through the wind, rain, lightning, and rainbows to the St. Louis area, where I was scheduled to give a talk on Monday to students and faculty at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville. We got there a day early, and used this time to visit a couple other neat spots. First was Cahokia, site of perhaps the largest prehistoric Native American settlement in the US. Cahokia is famous for the wealth of artifacts uncovered here, as well as the impressive earthen mounds built over many decades. This picture of Kenny shows him probably about 1/3 of the way up the largest of these mounds, Monks Mound, which is probably 100 feet high and whose base covers something like 14 acres.

We also toured the beautiful museum facility they have there at Cahokia, before moving on to our next stop--the St. Louis Gateway Arch. Standing over 600 feet tall, this famous tourist stop was crawling with a large number of visitors, many dressed in St. Louis Cardinal colors before the first home game of the season (the ballpark is close to the National Park). After we got through the security, we bought tickets for the tram leading up to the top of the Arch. Finally, after waiting more than an hour for our turn, we got into our little car and were hauled to the top of the Arch. The kids loved climbing the inclined sides to peer out the little windows at the ground below. Hope and I were less than thrilled with the swaying you felt at the top--the strong winds that day pushed the Arch back and forth VERY noticeably. After what we determined to be long enough, we rode back down, returned to our car and hotel, and then later that evening visited the home of some other friends for supper.

While I met with the SIU-E faculty and gave my talk, Hope and the kids went to the St. Louis Zoo, and enjoyed the 80+ degree day there. We met up after my talk, and drove another three hours north before stopping for the night. By the time we left the next morning, rain was starting to fall, and we drove through some heavy, steady rain before arriving in Madison, Wisconsin, about mid-morning. We hooked up with Brother John Bragg at his apartment, went out for a nice breakfast, and then did a quick walk through the state capitol before continuing northward. As we drove north, the temperature continued to drop into the 30s by the time we got to Rhinelander. Shortly thereafter--it snowed!! We knew there was a chance of this, but it still seemed a pleasant surprise. This picture of Kenny was taken in the late afternoon yesterday--it has continued to snow lightly, and the wind has picked up considerably. With a couple inches of fresh snow on the ground, temperatures in the mid-20s, and a strong wind swirling the snow around, it feels more like winter now than it did in late December when we visited for Christmas!!

More to come!