Day Eight, St. Louis, MO: The Gateway to the West

Today was my first full day in St. Louis. One of my hosts, Dave, felt compelled to show me around the city and I enjoyed this thoroughly. Despite being a recent transplant to the area – a native of Huntsville, Alabama – Dave is thoroughly educated on the city and its history.

Our first stop was Schlafly’s Brewery, which is gaining popularity in light of of the recent acquisition of Anheuser-Busch by Belgium-based InBev. Anheuser-Busch had historically been a large contributor to the city, both as a business and cultural icon. The move to sell to InBev left many in the community feeling betrayed, and seemed to result in a slight shift of allegiances.

Schlafly is really the brand name of beers produced by what is officially the Saint Lewis Brewery, Inc., and is a small craft brewery and not yet a major operation, (producing about 30,000 barrels per year, compared to about 90,000 from Bell’s in Kalamazoo.) I’d never been on a tour of a brewery before, other than through Modern Marvels on History, and the experience was interesting. The tanks pictured above are merely storage tanks, and not actually used in the brewing process, (other than some minor post-brew flavoring), which takes place in a separate and much smaller series of tanks. There was a small office for what looked like a Beer Chemist. I wonder what it would take to get that sort of job?

Lunch at the brewery’s restaurant was a southern-style Pulled Pork sandwich and some pan fried corn, both of which were delicious. We then continued on to Ted Drewes Frozen Custard shop off Route 66. Despite being quite a distance from Busch Stadium, the shop is packed after Cardinal’s games, with lines stretching into the street and down the block. It’s a local legend and choice establishment, and the Big Apple Concrete was deserving of its reputation.

After this, the 98 degree weather forced us back indoors. My tender Michigan soul is still growing accustomed to this unnatural heat, which was amplified by a lack of both clouds or breeze. For dinner, we went to Fitz’s, located on the Delmar Loop. In terms of entertainment and culture, the Loop is more of a downtown than Downtown St. Louis is, although it is located on the far West end of the city. The Loop includes many older establishments and was quite an interesting site to see at night.

Fitz’s is a root beer brewery, although it is primarily a restaurant. One interesting appetizer native to St. Louis are T-Ravs, or toasted ravioli. They’re the accidental invention of a cook who, when told to cook the ravioli, assumed that a deep fryer was the best place to do so. They’re similar to mozzarella sticks and taste great. 

The night concluded with a dramatic lightening storm that lasted beyond the half hour I spent watching. The rain would follow eventually, but not for some time. This, I believe, is a weather pattern quite rare in southern Michigan.

Day One, Cincinnati OH: Setting Forth

The long-awaited trip has finally begun. I’ve known that I wanted to take this trip for the last year. It’s a little odd that things have finally progressed from the planning stage to the execution stage. The last six weeks have been an epic whirlwind of packing, gathering things, reading up on equipment and places to go, and making other arrangements. So I’m a little tired. But now this is starting to feel like a vacation again.

Today I drove down to Cincinnati. I plan on staying here for a few days with some family, while stuffing myself full of Skyline Chili. To some people such as myself, Skyline is the kind of thing you make a special trip to another state for. Others find it not as amazing, but I’m not going to single anybody out. That said, Google has located a Skyline in Monroe, MI, so it appears that there is, finally, a glacial-speed advance northward.

So, some web things to draw your attention to. If you scroll down, you’ll see a bunch of interesting gizmos on the sidebar, located on the right side of your page. The “Followers” allow me to see who is reading the site. Besides, you get to be a member of something, and that is almost always fun. As I’ve mentioned before, you can log in with either a Google, AIM, or Yahoo! account. If, after doing so, you still don’t see yourself in the sidebar, you need to go to settings and select ‘follow publicly.’ There really is no good reason to secretly follow along, but I believe ‘private’ is the default setting.

If you want to get email updates whenever I post something, (which I hope will be every day or two), you’ll have to sign up in the form directly below that. Do note that immediately after you sign up, you will receive an email which will contain a verification link. Sometimes this gets sent to your spam folder, so check that, or you will be left out. When I make a post, you’ll receive an email the next morning with a shortened version of the post. It will be like a newspaper, but in your inbox, and for free.

Next, you’ve got the Google Latitude gadget. This tells you where I am, as long as I’ve got it activated through my phone. So if I’m driving, you’ll be able to watch me meander through your screen. It might be a little strange at first, but I think we’ll all get used to it. Also, you can follow me on Twitter. I suppose this will be useful if you just can’t wait until I make a post to see what I’m up to. But I wouldn’t consider it must-see, exclusive content and since I’m not going to be Tweeting every eight seconds, I’m not sure how it won’t be redundant.

With that out of the way, let me just say thank you to all of you who have listened to me talk about this trip, helped me plan it, and are now following it. It’s  a pretty cool thing and I really appreciate it. Keep sending links to your friends and posting the site on Facebook, or anywhere else that you see fit. I expect that the more people are reading, commenting, and following, the more fun everyone will have.