Sunday, July 15, 2012

Back to St. Louis


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.
Well, I am heading out to Washington DC to visit with Mr. Dunlap’s brother, Benjamin and his wife Heather.  It should be an exciting trip seeing our nation’s capital.
This is me at the top!

Here I am waiting for the train under Eads Bridge