The drive between Oklahoma and our next destination (Chicago) is a long one through the area of the country most of us know as the “fly-overs”. For us it was the “drive-throughs”. I’ll spare you the suspense and let you know that we stopped in St Louis mainly because it was a good stopping point and we were tired of driving. It seemed nice but we weren’t really there to see it.

But yet again, here is a cool thing about travel. One of my favorites, in fact. If you open yourselves up to possibilities (in my experience nearly all travel requires this), fun surprises are everywhere. Like when you take your kids to the Old Spaghetti Warehouse in downtown for dinner because it’s almost 9 and the kids love pasta and you just need to eat SOMETHING.

And then you come out of the restaurant to this

I should make a note here that not only do we really enjoy fireworks but we had just learned that we would not be able to see a firework show later in the week (on the 4th) due to a scheduling conflict. Excellent timing. We were even on the perfect street.

As the designated planner for TB I am often the one researching every possible event or attraction fueled likely by what my friend The Colonel refers to as FOMO–fear of missing out. (NB: she likely did not coin this phrase but since I’m out of the loop on most pop culture references I’m thinking she came up with this. Also she’s quite clever in general.) We had no plan for St Louis other than to sleep and avoid getting mugged (the RV park was RIGHT downtown so…) but ended up with a super fun evening by luck. Yet another benefit of travel.

And we didn’t get mugged! 👏🏼