Grannies gone wild

My bestest bud, Jill, and I spent a three day weekend in historic...and HOT...

St. Charles, MO

. I don't mean hot in a good way, either. When we got there, it was 98 with a heat index of somewhere around 105.

Ok, so grannies gone wild might be a bit of a stretch. But we did have a blast, even if a bit...ah...subdued...from our younger, more...ah...adventurous days. Hey, we really are grannies. And as such, of course I forgot my damn camera (fuckityfuckityfuck), so I'll provide a buncha links, instead.

Ostensibly, the trip was planned so that I could deliver all the cute, "girly", back-to-school clothes I'd picked up for my granddaughter. Having done that, we spent the rest of the weekend shopping, eating, gambling, eating, shopping, talking, eating...well...you get the idea.

We left after I got off work at noon on Friday. After a stop at my daughter's riverside digs and a brief visit, she suggested we try

R.T. Weilers

, a downtown St. Charles bar for supper. It's a nice, family-type bar and grill with a doggy theme. Appetizers are served in plastic doggy bowls, photos of dogs of every size and description line the walls...you get the whole "theme" idea. Of course, Karsin and her little pal, Riley, loved it. Jules, Jill and I all chose the rib-eye steak sammich...YUM!

We stayed at the

St. Charles Inn

. It's clean, reasonably priced and really handy to the downtown area. I did have an interesting conversation with the young, heavily-accented Eastern Indian guy who checked us in. The conversation went something like this:

Maddy: (that was his name...it was short for something un-spellable and equally unpronouncable in Indian) "Chill-a-cot-ee? That's the name of a town? What is that?"

Me: It's Chillicothe. I think it's an Indian word."

Maddy: I am Indian and I have never heard of that."

Me: "Uh...(I started to say "feather not dot", but figured he wouldn't get that, either)...I mean American Indian."

After supper, Karsin went to spend the night with Riley, and the three of us decided to try our luck...or lack of it...at the

Ameristar Casino

. It's a huuuuge, gorgeous casino. And that's all I have to say about that. heh

Saturday, we spent the morning shopping downtown. We stopped for lunch on the patio at

Little Hills Winery

. I had a fabulous grilled salmon salad. It was a grilled hunk o' salmon, resting on a huge pile of fresh spinach with croutons, boiled eggs, red onion and topped with a yummy honey-mustard dressing. I figured after all the beer and other junk we had to eat, I oughta eat something reasonably healthy. heh It mighta been healthy, but it was also damn good. I'm addin that recipe to my collection.

Saturday afternoon, Jules took us on a tour of the subdivision where she used to live,

New Town

. It's got to be one of the most unique subdivisions I've ever seen. We also stopped to tour...and drool over...a couple of model homes.

Anybody got a spare half a mil to loan me? Didn't think so. Aw, who'm I kiddin? Honestly...it's a gorgeous subdivision and the homes were beautiful. But it's a subdivision with postage-stamp sized lawns and nosy neighbors. Definitely not my idea of a great place to live.

Now, take one of those homes and put it right on the spot where we live now, and that'd be pretty special.

Saturday evening found Jill and I back at the casino. We tried to get into Pearl's Oyster Bar, but the line was far too long. So we made up for the healthy lunch by stuffin ourselves at the fabulous buffet and then tried to recoup our losses from the night before. Notice I said "tried". And that's all I'll say about that, too.

After a leisurely breakfast at Denny's Sunday morning, we headed north, takin the "scenic" route home through Alton and the secondary roads. It took longer to get home, but the drive was nicer.

Jill and I decided that this was somethin we needed to do at least once a year. We made a promise to each other to do just that.

And I mean it.