Flat Juliette
Adventures in Kirkwood, Maplewood,
and downtown St. Louis,
MO, June 19, 2012 through July 15, 2012.
**Apologies from the
hosts (The Dunlap Family) for occupying nearly a month of Juliette’s year-long
trip.
What follows in an
excerpt from Juliette’s travel journal…
…I arrived
in Kirkwood, MO to the home of Josh, Casey, Noah, and
Toby Dunlap on June 19, 2012. It was not
as warm of greeting as I had hoped since Mrs. Dunlap and my previous host’s
were such good friends. However, I soon
understood why. It seems that the young
boys in the family; Noah, who was just a couple months past 4 years old, and
Toby, two-and-a-half years old, were in the hospital. Mr. and Mrs. Dunlap were with them at St.
Louis Children’s hospital after the little boys were diagnosed with an
infection of Escherichia coli, or what most people know as E. coli.
This
illness was pretty scary for the mom and dad since many children who get sick
with E. coli sometimes have their kidneys stop working. The kidneys are very important and keep the
blood in your body nice and clean, but with an E. coli infection, the toxin
released from the bacteria makes the red blood cells break apart and start to
clog up the kidneys. If it gets too bad,
some patients have to have dialysis or a transfusion. Dialysis is where the doctors hook up tubes
from a special blood cleaning machine to the patient to clean their blood to
help the kidneys out. A transfusion is
where the doctors take out a lot of bad blood and put in new blood from a blood
bank.
Noah didn’t get
nearly as sick as Toby, and the doctors said that he could go home on Thursday
June, 21. Both boys had been in the
hospital since the day before Father’s Day.
Such a strange present to give their dad!
 |
This is a picture of Noah and Toby at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.
|
Toby’s
condition was not improving and the doctors decided that he needed a
transfusion. Toby had swelled up from so
much fluid that he had gained nearly 10 pounds.
The doctors thought that his kidneys were about to shut down and so on
Sunday morning, June 24, Toby had a transfusion. A couple days later, the doctors were so
happy to see that Toby was getting better, that they said that he could go home
too. Thank goodness for the clean
healthy blood in the blood bank. This
just shows how important it is to give blood during local blood drives!
After
being home for a few days, Mr. Dunlap thought it was time to show me around
town. We visited the Kirkwood train station and farmer’s
market. It is so nice to see so many
happy people enjoying the nice day.
Then, we decided to
see the biggest national monument in the United States of America, The
Gateway Arch. It was June 30, almost
100°F outside, and the big Independence Day party that the City of St. Louis
puts on called Fair St. Louis was just starting to get set up. We thought that it would be a great
opportunity to see the riverfront Mr. Dunlap, Noah, Toby, Grandma Dunlap (who
likes to be called Yia-yia), and me loaded up and headed to a train station in Shrewsbury, MO
to catch a ride on the MetroLink. The
MetroLink is an electric train that makes up part of the public transportation
system for St. Louis
and the surrounding towns and cites.
After boarding the train in Shrewsbury,
we rode the train all the way down to the station under Eads Bridge. Eads
Bridge is a very old bridge that
connected St. Louis, Missouri
to East St. Louis, Illinois.
 |
Here I am sitting in my seat on the MetroLink on the way
down to the Arch.
|
We
walked across the riverfront right up to the Arch. The arch is made out of stainless steel and
people are allowed to walk right up to it and touch it.
 |
The Arch is so tall, it is hard to get a picture of the
whole thing so close.
|
 |
This is Noah, me, and Toby standing in front of the north
leg of the Arch. It is really shiny,
and you can see Yia-yia’s reflection
|
There
is a museum underground between the legs of the arch. After we went in and got our tickets to ride
the tram up to the very top, we walked through the museum. There are a lot of interesting things to see
in the museum which is called the Museum
of Westward Expansion, which is a
great place to learn about the Louisiana Purchase and what life in America was
like back around the early 1800s. That
is over 200 years ago!
 | ||||
| This is me inside a teepee on display in the museum. |
 |
| This is me and Noah on the ride up to the top! |
We
spent a lot of time looking through the exhibits, but eventually it was our
turn to ride the tram. When they built
the Arch, they had the great idea to put a tiny train inside the arch so that
people could ride up to the top. The
tram cars are very small and barely hold 5 people, but the view from the top is
worth the cramped ride. When we got to
the top, there were about 80 people already there. People were taking turns looking out the
small windows out over the city and over the river into Illinois.
Thankfully the air conditioning was working! The very top of the Arch is 630 feet from the
ground. This makes it the tallest
monument in the country.
By
the time we got off the tram ride back down to the bottom, it was getting late
and we decided to head back home. We
waited at the MetroLink station under the Eads Bridge
again. It was a very hot day and we were
all tired. We thought about going to Ted
Drewes’ Frozen Custard for a fruit concrete, but later decided to visit Noah
and Toby’s great-grandma and great-grandpa to tell them about our adventure. Maybe next time I am back in St. Louis, I can visit Ted Drewe’s after a
day at the Zoo.
 |
| This is our souvenir photo for our Arch tram ride. The big happy fellow is Josh, Noah and Toby's dad. |
 |
| This is me at the top! |
 |
| Here I am waiting for the train under Eads Bridge |
