The complete set:

 

It will take me a bit to get through all of the photos that I took today, but for those of you who are not prone to waiting, here is a sampling:

 

My baby sis is getting married tomorrow. Here are some photos from the rehearsal:

 

Well I had intended to post to the blog during vacation frequently. However, lack of internet availability and the fact that we kept rather busy prevented that from happening. Then I intended to do a giant vacation recap once I got home. But a stockpile of work to be done prevented that from happening too. I started this post a week ago and I’m just now finishing it. But, without further delay, here is the vacation recap.

8/20

We left Thursday afternoon and made it to the airport in good time. We breezed through parking, check-in, and security and arrived at our gate earlier than expected only to find out that our flight was delayed by more than an hour. So we spent a good 3 hours waiting for our flight.

The flight was relatively smooth and we arrived in St. Louis and quickly retrieved our baggage and headed to the rental car facility. I was very pleased with the rental car we were given. I had rented a full-size car but it is always a bit of a mystery as to what you might get. Ours was a Mercury Sable Premium which was roomy and had every option including leather interior. Very nice!

We continued on to find a place to have some dinner. We exited the highway at a location with several restaurant choices and we pleased to find one of our favorite stops…Buffalo Wild Wings. So we started the vacation with a selection of wings and then headed to the south side of St. Louis to the home of our good friends Adam and Elizabeth and their three boys.

8/21

Friday we set out to tour the St. Louis area. We started by heading downtown to tour the Gateway Arch:

Here are a couple of other shots from the arch area:

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The boys even got touch the Mississippi River:

After the arch, we had lunch downtown in the Laclede’s Landing area at Hannegan’s Restaurant. There we sampled a St. Louis favorite…toasted ravioli.

From there we visited a very unique St. Louis attraction…City Museum. City Museum is definitely a “have to see it to understand it” venue. It is a 600,000 square foot downtown building that has been transformed into part playground/funhouse, part eclectic collection display. It incorporates many areas for children to climb, crawl, slide, etc. Here is a photo of the outside:

On the way back from the downtown area, we took a detour to sample another St. Louis favorite…frozen custard from Ted Drewes. Their famous “concretes” are not only delicious, they are so thick that they hold them upside down before handing them to you.

8/22

On Saturday, we got up early because Alex was scheduled to participate in a Kid’s triathlon with Zachary Ward. It was a pretty cool event. He had to swim 75 meters, then get out of the pool and run to his bike and bike for a mile, then get out and run 1/2 mile which seemed to be mostly up hill.

After the triathlon, we visited Grant’s Farm which is the 281-acre ancestral home of the Busch family (of Anheuser-Busch) turned public attraction/zoo/farm, etc. It houses more than 1,000 animals including the majority of the Anheuser-Busch Clydesdales.

Many of the Budweiser commercials are filmed at Grant’s Farm. Maybe this little guy (or not so little really) will be featured in one some day:

After Grant’s Farm, we rested for a bit before bidding farewell to the Ward’s and beginning our trek across the state to our “cabin in the woods” near Kimberling City, Missouri.

8/23

Sunday morning I got up early…while it was still dark…and set out with my camera to explore the grounds and capture the sunrise. It would turn out to be the only morning I was up early enough to see the sunrise, but it was well worth it:

Having arrived late on Saturday evening, Sunday morning also brought the essential trip to stock up on groceries (and snacks) for the week. The boys each bought a disposable camera so they could “be like dad” and capture their vacation memories in photos. Joshua blew through his photos by mid week saving only a couple for the week’s end. The more conservative Alex still has not used his allotted exposures.

Sunday evening we headed to Branson to have dinner and explore the town. We settled on McFarlain’s Family Restaurant for some good ole country fare including their famous honey cornbread, chicken pot pie, and ribs. Sadly, we were too full to sample their selection of homemade cobblers and pies.

After driving around town, we headed to Branson Landing which is a lake front outdoor shopping/restaurant area similar to the Inner Harbor only the shop entrances were all outdoors. It was a very cool place. We enjoyed the fountain show amongst the thousands of flowers surrounding the area:

While there I also got this shot of Alex do his best to tryout for a Gap ad:

8/24

Monday was a favorite day when voting was tallied at the end of the week. We visited Dogwood Canyon Nature Park where we biked to the end of their 3.2 mile trail and back. Along the way we enjoyed some beautiful scenery including a number of waterfalls, streams, and stone bridges.

The boys got to feed some trout:

And for those of you who do not believe I road a bike (I’ve heard the commentary), here is the proof:

Monday evening we made sure we were back in time to watch the Ravens pre-season game against the Jets.

8/25

Tuesday we headed back to Branson where we visited the Butterfly Palace & Rainforest Adventure:

We followed that up with a trip to the go-cart track where Joshua and I teamed up in a car to race Alex. Then came a family skeeball tournament that earned enough tickets so that each of the boys could get a shiny new piece of crap prize.

While driving around town, Alex noticed that it was kids eat free night at Montana Mike’s Steakhouse. Being the steak aficionado that he is, he asked if we could have dinner there, and so we did. Unfortunately, they did not have steak on the kid’s menu (other than chopped steak which is not steak according to Alex and his dad). So he an I split a very, very tasty T-bone. He is ready to go back to Missouri just for the steak.

Each of the boys got to sit in the General Lee at Cooter’s Place. Yep. It’s a Dukes of Hazzard store.

We finished off the evening by visiting the Table Rock Dam area and photographing the sunset:

8/26

Wednesday was our tour of Arkansas day. We drove south to the very unique town of Eureka Springs which has many beautiful Victorian homes and a great many twisting streets. It was just outside of Eureka Springs where we found the 65 foot statue of Jesus:

Nearby we also found Thorncrown Chapel…a nearly all glass chapel in a serene wooded mountainside setting. It was quite beautiful.

From Eureka Springs we headed south to War Eagle, Arkansas (there was a movie by that name in 2007) where we visit the War Eagle Cavern:

We also drove by the War Eagle Mill:

From there we drove a bunch more before stopping for dinner in Harrison, Arkansas at a cool little place called Neighbors Mill. It is a bakery/cafe where we each had a delicious sandwich and sampled their baked goods.

8/27

Thursday we decided to have a low key day and stayed around the resort. We took advantage of some of the facilities available to us.

We played mini-golf:

And took a paddle boat out on the on the lake:

8/28

On Friday we visited the very beautiful Roaring River State Park.

The boys again got to feed the stream trout:

The Roaring River Spring produces an average of 20.4 million gallons of water per day. It is the 20th largest spring in Missouri. It is more than 224 feet deep at its opening.

The fish hatchery at Roaring River is one of five state owned hatcheries located in the waters produced by Missouri’s natural springs. The five hatcheries produce more than 2.5 million rainbow trout each year.

As we were driving around, we passed a number of cattle which again made Alex crave steak:

Friday evening we made our final trip into Branson for another steak dinner.

8/29

Saturday we packed up the car and headed back across the state to St. Louis to catch our flight home. On the way we made a brief stop at another of Missouri’s natural springs. Maramec Spring produces 96 million gallons of water daily and houses another trout hatchery. Unlike Roaring River, this park is not state owned.

Well that about does it. I still have a bunch of photos to get through. As always, more photos are available for viewing on my flickr account and I’ll be continuing to post more there as I get to them.