Focht Family Blog

After the zoo we drove to the Gateway Arch. Parking was fun. Apparently people line their cars 3 or 4 deep on the edge of the Mississippi as a parking lot. We were afraid that when we left that we would be blocked in so we parked on an outside edge. Here are Samantha and Timmy at the edge of the Mississippi River. Samantha and Nathan both touched the river…

Here is a view of the Arch as we were walking towards it…

Here is Samantha and Timmy “touching” the Arch…

Here is the view looking up as we were going in. It is pretty amazing when you look up and realize that you will soon be standing at the little windows….

Once we were inside Timmy started getting scared about going to the top. I have to say I wasn’t too sure about it either when I saw the tiny pods that was supposed to be our ride to the top. I would guess that with our society expanding that there are a few people that can’t get into the pods. Here is a shot of the kids in a pod that was at the ticket counter. If Nathan wasn’t in the middle seat he had to keep his head down to avoid bumping the ceiling. All 6 of us were in one of these pods…

Once at the top Timmy was happier. We looked out the window facing the RV Park and we were able to point out our campsites….

Here is a picture of the kids sitting up by one of the windows…

And here are views from both sides of the Arch….

After the Arch we went back to the RV to eat dinner and wait for the fireworks. At 9:00 the children’s fireworks went off at First Night across the town and we could see a few of them between the buildings. However, they do not have fireworks at the Arch on New Year’s Eve. I guess that is only on the Fourth of July, so at midnight we saw a few between the buildings from First Night but that was it. Oh well! :)

On New Year’s Eve we decided we would go to the arch and maybe one other place. We went out and ran some errands. We got mom some propane and went to the post office. Then Nathan went to meet with a customer that is in St Louis, D’Italia. While Nathan was in his meeting I called around and found out that the zoo closed at 3:00 but the arch was open until 6:00, so when his meeting was over we headed to the zoo. It is listed under my reciprocity list but it is free all year to anyone. A lot of the animals were in and towards the end of our visit more were taken in so that their areas could be cleaned for closing.

Here is the Sun Bear. I was surprised that when I got home and looked at the picture that the bear looks like it has blue eyes…

They had a lot of large cats but most of them are in cages and I hate having to look at pictures with bars in front of them. The lions were in a pit so that I could zoom in on them without having to have bars in the picture. Here is the lioness and the lion…

The lion was watching a man that was walking by us. It was the handler and it was dinner time. On our way to some of the indoor animals, the kids found a statue of some kind of bull. I took a picture of them but Josh refused to believe that he was in the picture so I had to take another picture of him by himself…

Indoors we found birds, monkeys, and snakes. Here is a picture of the kids by the lemurs. The lemurs were all curled up together by the window…

One of the last animals we saw on our way out of the zoo was the camel. He was being called in but he waited for a couple of pictures before listening…

Well… we feel stupid. Since we are in St Louis, we decided to get together for dinner with one of my mom’s friends, Jane Barnard. She teaches math at Armstrong. I always love getting to see Jane. She is one of the nicest people I have ever met. We went to Zia’s in The Hill section of St Louis. Our reservations were at 5:30 and we got there at 5:30 and the hostess told us we were an hour early!! Considering Samantha and I just did a lesson on time zones you would think one of us would realize that we crossed the line from Eastern to Central! :) Here is a picture of Jane with mom and the kids…

While in Branson we didn’t do much. Mostly we stayed at camp and got caught up with schoolwork and cleaning. We went there because Nathan’s parents were going through. They went to a bunch of shows. Mom went to Andy Williams with them on one of the nights.

The one thing we did do was take a ride on the Branson Scenic Railway.

We rode the whole way in one of the cars that has the windows surrounding it. Here is a view out of one of the windows.

We bought the kids some snacks to eat while on the train and they got a little bit messy with crumbs. Mom volunteered to clean it so the people working on the train didn’t have to clean so hard. They decided to put her to work.

Downstairs they had a small room that had a toy train set up for the kids to play with. While downstairs playing one of the conductors came down to talk to us and the kids took turns trying on his hat. Here is Samantha, Timmy and Josh in the hat as well as a picture of all of them playing with the train set.

When we left Seattle we thought we would stay out of the cold weather but apparently that was very short lived. We decided that we wanted a few upgrades to the All-Star so we are headed to Newmar. We are currently in the last leg of the journey. We left Manteca, CA on Saturday morning and we have crossed into Indiana from Illinois already.

Unfortunately I found out the hard way that my camera has decided to die. Apparently the blurriness from the last picture wasn’t water on the lens. Last night we stopped for the night at a Walmart in Springfield, MO because the roads were becoming too icy and we were afraid we would have to end up pulling off where there was no safe place to stop. It was amazing driving into the parking lot and seeing the ice everywhere. I tried to take a picture of one of the cart returns where ice was hanging off of every piece of metal and where the road crew had piled ice/snow up against the side. Here is how it ended up looking.

I figured it was just the problems that I have already had with the flash and darkness so I tried again this morning near St. Louis when we stopped for gas. I took a picture of the windshield washing bucket frozen into a large ice cube.

So I started looking online as to what a new camera was going to cost me. Nathan reminded me that the nice, expensive video camera that he bought me for Christmas also takes pictures so I started playing around with it in the RV. I decided to take a picture out of the windshield so everyone in the south can feel warmer. This is I-80 in Indiana right after we crossed the Illinois border.

The water running down the windshield is ice that keeps coming off of the roof. We have changed our course a few times today because I keep checking the DOT websites to figure out which roads are cleared and safe for travel. Although we are driving pretty slow right now we are still planning on making it into Camp Newmar tonight. Tomorrow is going to be a HUGE cleaning day. We are going to drive to the laundromat and strip all of the beds and then scrub from top to bottom. We have let it go too long and things are looking gross.

Anyways, I will be a better wife and start carrying the larger camera so I can get decent pictures. That is the only downside to the video camera. My digital camera fits into a pocket in my purse. The video camera does not.