January 24, 2008

January 24, 2008

I have been wanting to go skiing. While back in Chicago we had planned on going to Wisconsin a couple times but the flu and unseasonably warm weather interfered with our best laid plans. Now we are back in sunny Tucson and skiing is far away. Well, not really. I have been watching the local mountaintop outside our window, waiting for a big rain down here that would dump snow up there. No luck. While surfing the web to setup a distant ski trip, I ran across the Mt Lemmon snow report number. I called it and they do have a small base and just got a new half-inch overnight. Well that is good enough for me. So I loaded Aimee and our ski gear in the car and headed uphill.

Mt Lemmon is just ten miles away but the only road up is on the other side of Tucson. An hour and a half later we pull into the parking lot. It is 26F. Brrrr! We rent skis and take the chairlift up thru a very foggy pine forest. It is like we are in a different world from Tucson. After a few runs we get our ski legs back and enjoy the slopes. We have the mountain all to ourselves. There are a handful of kids but they never leave the bunny slope. Overall the runs are very short and all-ice at the bottom but you can’t beat the location. After freezing our tushes on icy lift chairs, we head back home thru a snowstorm to high 60’s weather and a warm Jacuzzi.

January 8, 2008

January 8, 2008

Chicago is enjoying record warm temps so we decided to go downtown to see some sights. Even though we lived for years in suburban Chicago we rarely made the trip. Weekends were too crowded and work kept us away during the week. I especially wanted to walk thru Millennium Park, the newest addition by Daley to the lakefront. The centerpiece of the park is an outdoor concert hall that we will have to revisit this summer. My park favorite was this gigantic metal jellybean sculpture. Its curvy surface is mirrored reflecting Chicago’s wonderful skyline. I had more than a few minutes of fun trying to take my self-portrait with the skyscrapers in the background.

With a couple hours left in the parking meter, Aimee and I went next door to the Art Institute for a quick run thru the galleries. The Art Institute has a big collection of French Impressionists, my favorite art genre. We even explored the basement for the first time. Down below are 68 dollhouse-size miniature rooms from throughout history. They are incredibly detailed. You can’t tell a photo of these miniatures from the real thing. Aimee was amused when she recognized the colonial Tennessee room as the entry hall of Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage in Nashville.

December 31, 2007

December 31, 2007

We spent New Years Eve with a bunch of animals. The animals of the St. Louis Zoo. After passing thru the main entrance and checking the map we decided to walk in the opposite direction from the tiger cage. With the recent news of the San Francisco tiger escape, Aimee saw no need to push our luck. Instead of man-eating tigers though, we immediately came face to face with a pair of huge Grizzly Bears. The Grizzlies’ cage-free home here allows a very up close and personal visit. A little too close. If it didn’t look like the bears were well fed I might have worried about them crawling up the not-so-high wall.

It is nice visiting a zoo in the off-season. No crowds and some of the animals even enjoy the winter weather. The polar bear looked like he was enjoying a summer day at the beach. He spent the whole time in his private pool floating on his back and trying to balance a beach ball on his nose. Unfortunately for us, the zoo closed early for New Years and we had to fly thru the rest of the park. Oh well, we need to head home early anyway before the real animals hit the street. The St. Louis Zoo is clearly the best of the few zoos I have visited. What I was most impressed with was how clean and shiny all the animals’ coats were. Like they just came from the beauty parlor. We saw a baboon that looked liked its long flowing hair was recently washed, blown-dry and run thru a kinking iron.

Since we had a little extra time, on the way back to Godfrey we stopped under the Clark Bridge over the Mississippi and watched several bald eagles soaring in the distance. None came close enough for a good photo opportunity.

December 25, 2007

We spent Christmas Eve with Aimee’s family and Christmas Day with my family. I took lots of photos, with my family all wanting to be in the blog. They got their wish. Merry Christmas to all!