Thursday, July 16, 2020

Voss Vaca 2020 - Day 9 - Arriving in St. Louis

After all of our hiking, we were ready to be at a place with a bed.  The kids were also anxious to get into the pool, because that's one of the most fun parts about staying at a hotel.  They were also pumped about getting into the hot tub, because they aren't allowed to at the Y, but they know they can when we're on vacation, lol!  I already told you about the food fiasco.  If you haven't read the Shawnee National Forest - Lake Glendale blog yet, go back and read that one first.  I wrote out a blog for the entire day, but then got nervous about the number of pictures I was adding to the one blog, so I ended up splitting it into 3 blogs.  This is number 3.  I'm not sure if I'll be able to upload Michael's pictures to this blog or not, but he got more/better pictures that night than I did, so I'm going to try.  Fireworks are never as good in the pictures, but at least you'll be able to see our view.  :-)


The next morning, before we left, I went down to get breakfast, but their little kitchen area was closed.  They did, however, have a few things behind the desk that an employee would get for you.  One other woman was downstairs when I went down, and she explained that her daughter travels for softball and this was one of the only places they'd been that hadn't completely shut down their breakfasts.  So I guess I'm glad that something was available.  Overall, I was very impressed with the hotel and their safety measures.  Obviously, there was a pane of plastic between the employee and guests at the front desk, you also had to be buzzed into the hotel or use your room key to get in, so random people weren't able to come in.  They even detained a group of teenage girls that came in behind some guests and made someone come from a room to pick them all up out of the lobby, I already mentioned that we had to sign up for an hour block of time to swim, that surfaces were sanitized before and after we left, there were also signs in the elevator saying to only go up with your group, which I thought was a really good idea.  My my my, the world sure is changing.  Anyway, we had a nice stay in St. Louis, but we were all ready for a night in our own beds the next day.  Check out the next blog to find out about our next day in St. Louis and the last leg of our drive that seemed to take FOREVER.  ;-)

Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Just so you know...

This is the reason I'm getting any blogging done this evening!  😂❤  
This little guy stayed up, who knows how long, last night playing on his tablet after Michael and I went to bed.  He's pretty wiped out today.  Even slept in until 11:30.  I assume he'll wake up and be full of energy just before bedtime...  🤦🏼‍♀️😂😊🤷🏼‍♀️❤

Voss Vaca 2020 - Day 9 - Shawnee National Forest - Garden of the Gods

Sorry for having to split day 9 into a couple of different posts!  I just had added a lot of pictures to that last post, and put a lot of time into it throughout the day, and didn't want to lose it all.  Let me tell you, that's one surefire way to get me to stop blogging for the day, or several, is to lose everything after putting an hour straight into making a good post.  I know I should use a better site, but I've had this blog for so many years, I just can't bear to part with it. 

So, as I mentioned in the last blog, at Garden if the Gods there were tons of people.  With the exception of a few pictures, and once we're accidently got onto the longer trail where there were fewer people, we had or masks on the whole time.  Say what you will about masks, but we wrote them religiously throughout this trip and now we're 10 days into our quarantine after returning home and none of us are sick.  That's not bad, if you ask me!  And the post-vacation quarantine was our own idea and choice.  I wish everyone would practice being cautious like we are, and maybe this thing wouldn't be getting as out of hand....   But this isn't the place for my lectures...

The cliffs were beautiful and terrifying.  The children felt invincible and I was an extremely nervous Mama.  I think this stop was one of Michael's favorite stops on the whole trip.  It was really good! And now we're have Illinois on our map!  ❤

This is what our Illinois picture would have looked like if someone hadn't offered to take one for us.  ❤
I'd say he did a pretty good job! 
Not anyone we know, but I wanted this panoramic and he wasn't coming down, so he's just in it. 
Tired boy