We picked up a car in St. Louis, Missouri and started driving towards Springfield, Illinois, home of Carrie and George, and their adorable baby girl, Lucy.
We did have one stop on the way - seeing as we were in St. Louis we decided to go and have a look at the Gateway Arch. This is a 192m tall monument in the form of a big arch (I'm sure you weren't expecting that). After seeing the long line outside we decided to skip the ride to the top and just wandered around the monument.
I was trying to take one of my "foot shots" when this crazy tourist decided to do a little photo-bombing on me:
The weather in Missouri was quite different from what we have become accustomed to in Arizona. The sun and warmth were replaced by clouds and chill but we did get to see the leafs turn a golden red.
After a couple of hours we arrived at our destination and were welcomed by Carrie, George, Lucy, and their huge dog Sam. Our gracious hosts decided to make us feel even more welcome by inviting some people over and having a little dinner party. The "dinner" part was great and normal. The "party" part was great and quite... unusual.
A couple of the guests brought with them a party game called "Quelf". This game is a bit difficult to describe if you've never played it before. Let me put it this way - at one point I found myself sitting with my shirt inside-out and the game's box tucked under it, while George, with a bicycle helmet on, kept telling me that "chickens are on fire" hoping that I would somehow guess that I was supposed to respond with the word "apple".
We spent a couple of days seeing the sights. First we went to the Abraham Lincoln Museum (well, Illinois is not known as the "Land of Lincoln" for nothing) which was surprisingly interesting. The following day we went to Hannibal, Missouri - the boyhood home of one Samuel Langhorne Clemens (you may know him as Mark Twain).
As we were making our way back to St. Louis for our flight back we came across another American icon - the Girls Gone Wild guys were travelling the country with their bus looking for "The hottest girl in America".
This made for quite an interesting few days for me: in one week I experienced two new states, good old friends, hallowed presidents, dead authors, burning chickens, and wild girls.
3 comments:
Nice!
I see you're having fun there.
"Quelf" seems like crazy fun. Is it as good as it seems on their site?
Sometimes I wish I had a good board game to play with friends (or some friends to play a board game with :)))
By the way, I googled Girls Gone Wild and... oh my god!!! :O
At first we weren't sure how that game would go because most of the people in the room were complete strangers (as far as we were concerned at least) and this seemed like the kind of game you play with your friend.
My first card told me to do some belly dancing in front of everyone - I skipped that one and took the penalty. I wasn't sure they were quite ready for that :)
But after that it seemed to be quite funny. I especially liked the whole "Chickens are on fire!" conversation - he kept repeating that for the duration of the timer :)
As for the Girls Gone Wild bus - that was actually funnier than I wrote - we were driving along and passed that bus. I really wanted to take a photo but I was driving, etc.
We then stopped at a gas station for some snacks and the bus pulled up to the same station - so I got lucky.
I'm glad you enjoyed your stay and wanted to inform you that I eventually managed to extinguish the chicken.
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