A little trip to Memphis

July 4th Margaritas with my extended family are an art form as is the conversation and company in general.

Fun was the destination as we wound our way to Memphis this year.  We decided to go through St. Louis this time so that we could take Max up in the Arch.  I remember doing it when I was younger and I still think of it as an unbelievable adventure.  We loaded up the truck and off we went.  This year we were caravanning with my parents, Oompy and Boompy are their grandparental monikers.  I will skip over the bad part of the first day but if you really want to know what happened, you can read about it here.

Boompy napping - He does this so well

We drove and drove till we were all pretty hungry and then we stopped at this great little park where we had our vast picnic lunch.  Boompy ate and then took a little snooze in the comfort of the shade in his car.  Paul wandered off to see if he could catch something with his rod and reel, but alas he only had a nice walk.  Oompy and Max sat under the shelter together with Oompy encouraging Max to stay in one spot long enough to eat his lunch.



Did I mention Boompy napped?


It was time to get back on the road and soon we found ourselves driving into St. Louis, Missouri.  I am sure that you know about the best laid plans....... well, we had a great plan to go up in the Arch when we arrived in St. Louis but there was some kind of festival going on and you couldn't park anywhere close to the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. A small aside.... I never knew that the St. Louis Arch had such a name!   I tried to put St. Louis Arch or Gateway Arch in my GPS and it wouldn't find it till I called it by it's correct name. Picky, Picky!

We drove around one block in the city trying to find out what we could do.  We called the Arch and they were just no help at all!  So we improvised and parked for the allotted 30 minutes when we found a spot and ran to the Arch and took some photos.

Looks like a totally fabricated photo but it is the real thing.  Weird!

Here is a bit of behind the scenes on how some photographic magic happens.  See how dedicated to my art I am?Can you guess what we were trying to do?

Here is the final product.  Pretty cool huh?  Looks like Max can bend steel.

We continued on to our nights stay at the Whittington Woods Camp Ground but first we stopped at the Good Ol' Days restaurant in New Baden, Illinois.  If you are ever going through Illinois south east out of St. Louis on hwy 64 you need to stop at Good Ol' Days to eat.  I had pork chops and they were crazy good!  They also have a whole BBQ/smoker set up that produced some great tasting pork and other meats.  Good service, great food and a really good value, definitely worth the trip and did I mention the homemade pies?

We had rented a cabin for the night and Max got lost for the first time in his life.  We went to take a shower before going to bed and he was in the men's shower room by himself.  He was suppose to wait for me to finish and come to get him but he was being brave and independent.  The one small issue he had to deal with was that he wasn't sure exactly where our cabin was.  I went to get him and he was nowhere to be found.  I knew what happened which helped me not to panic.  Paul and I proceeded to scour the campground.  Off in the distance I saw the silhouettes of two large and one small figure walking toward the cabin and I called out to Max.  He was dropped off by two nice young guys who found him crying in a small field next to their campsite.  Poor kid.  He weathered the fear and anxiety and promised to always wait for me to get him.  The next morning he hit the pool for a well deserved swim with his dad.

We were off once again.  This time the final destination was Memphis and no driving for a couple of days.  Before we head off to Memphis, Boompy needed a little nappy-poo.

While Boompy is napping, I will take a break and post more about our trip tomorrow.  Shhhhhhhh.

Did you have a good time? Did you enjoy this post? Let me know and leave a comment. Share the post with your family and friends on your favorite social media or subscribe and help support Flying Monkeys. If you go to StumbleUpon using the icon on the right and click the “I Like it” button(it’s free), you help other people to discover Don’t Make Me Call My Flying Monkeys and that will help our little blog grow and our monkeys can keep doing what they do best - FLY. Thank you for all of your support. The Monkey Queen