September 30 – “630 feet high”

We woke up to some rather sad news yesterday.  Nathan called, and our elder dog Heidi apparently had an encounter with some kind of critter that chewed off half of her tail.  Nathan FaceTimed us so we could see the carnage.    Otherwise she seemed fine, though.  He took her on to the vet, who said she needed surgery to trim off the exposed tendons and muscles.  The plan is for Nathan to run the intensive care unit for the first day.  Then Kel will take her to his house for the long-term rehab until we get home.  Then Nathan called with a report from the surgery.  It wasn’t a critter interloper after all.  She apparently chewed off her own tail because of neuropathy.  Hey.  I have been diagnosed with neuropathy, too.  And there have been days when I was particularly hungry.  Just never have been able to reach my toes.  The rest of the story is that she will be wearing one of those evil cone things for a few weeks, and she has to take the same medication I am taking.  Geriatric dog taking the same meds I take.  Hmm …  Oh, and word has it she might be going by a new nickname.  Stubby?  

Back to our journey.  We passed through one town that had not one but two water towers.  One was marked “Cold” and the other “Hot.”  How do they do that?

Our next National Park was Ulysses S. Grant’s home near St. Louis.  We had to make our way through a pile of traffic.  They were all trying to get to the wild animal theme park next door.  The Ranger told us he has been indentured at this particular park since he was eleven years old.  But he was incredibly passionate about the park.  Best Ranger yet.

Then we made our way to the next National Park site.  To get there we had to weave our way through a really seedy part of town, and ended up parking on a levee about six feet from the River.  It was like parking right next to the beach on Labor Day weekend.  And then we had to disappear underground so we could ride the tram up.  Yep.  We went up to the top of the St. Louis Arch.  And yes, it is a National Park site.

Now that tram ride was a trip in more ways than one.  Five people had to squeeze into a tiny, egg-shaped container (Read here, Chris was less than happy at this wonderful opportunity to display her inherent claustrophobic tendencies) for the four minute ride to the top with the only view being the mechanical operations and the 1,076 steps.  Once at the top (630 feet high, by the way) we were emptied into a small observation room with 80 or 90 of our new best friends.  The room had several long, skinny windows on each side so we could share the view.  And that view was awesome.  I could see the inside of the Cardinals baseball stadium next door.  No game happening, though.  But awesome nonetheless.  Then came the three minute ride to the bottom.  Quicker going down than up.  Yep, I noticed that.  So did Chris.

We salvaged our car off the levee parking lot and headed to our next destination.  And then stopped.  And then started.  And then stopped.  And then started.  Terrible traffic, all vying for the one street that led to where we had to go to get out of town.  It took us about 45 minutes or so, but we finally hit the road headed east once again.

Psalms 103:13-14 says, “As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.”

Father, thank you for riding up and down that little tiny space capsule with us.  Amen.