Today was supposed to be just a travel day to St Louis so we would be poised to enter St Louis in the morning and far enough outside the city to facilitate escape the next day without the morning traffic. So we're actually staying in Chesterfield, Missouri, about 20 miles west of the city. We expected to be here about 1 o'clock, and looked for something to do in the afternoon. To our pleasant surprise the Sarah Sachs Butterfly House was only a few minutes from the hotel, so now we had a plan.
     When we hit the road in the morning it was a bit chilly, only 63 degrees, but we had confidence that as the sun came out, it would warm up . Unfortunately, it was really kind of a drizzly dreary morning, and in the afternoon, a cold front came through so it actually dropped to 58 degrees by mid-afternoon. Undaunted, we just bundled up and headed out! In spite of the cold, it was a great riding day. Routes US-60E and MO-34E were nothing special, but the scenery improved significantly when we hit MO-21N. We even ran into a working Drive-In Theater on Route 21 called, originally enough, the "21 Drive In". For $8.00 you could see not only Perfect Pitch 2, but also Paul Blart Mall Cop 2. Talk about your culture overload!
     Then on to MO-49N and MO-32W which were as scenic as MO-21N, but much more hills and twists. It was great fun! So much fun, in fact, that it took 20 miles to figure out it should have been MO-32E and not MO-32W. Oh well, out came the iPhone and the Mapquest and we soon heading out on MO-19N and MO-8E to get back on course. All were great roads and great fun on the bike. Most of the time we had the roads to ourselves, but there was a time on MO-8E where we got behind some redneck towing a bass boat . So I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to pass this guy when I realized he was pulling away from me. He's hitting speeds of 65 mph on these twisty back roads - speed limit 55 - towing a bass boat, and I'm thinking "Hell, I'm on a MOTORCYCLE and he's TOWING A BASS BOAT. I should be able to keep up!"  He obviously knew the roads, so I thoroughly enjoyed the spirited ride for about 20 miles on MO-8E until he finally turned off. I managed to keep up for most of the ride, slowing a little on the curves and catching back up on the straightaways.
     In spite of our unexpected detour, we managed to arrive at the Butterfly House at about 2:30. That gave us plenty of time to take in the sites. We took as many pictures as we could with the two real cameras we had. Unfortunately, I forgot to charge the batteries in both cameras last night, so they both quickly died and we were down to using iPhone cameras. It was still a great time and quite an adventure for the mere $6 admission. There were some really pretty, large blue butterflies we tried to take pictures of, but they almost never landed, and when they did, they were always closed up. Too bad, we would have really like d to take that picture.
     Then it was off to the hotel, about 5 minutes away, a cup of coffee to warm up and off to an Italian place for dinner called Babbo's. Food was pretty good, I had a huge piece of lasagna, and Jody had the Risotto of the Day which also pretty good, though Midwest scallops tend to be a little rubbery.
     Tomorrow we are off to the St Louis Zoo and the St Louis Botanical Gardens, let's hope the sun at least peeks out for a little while and warms up these poor Orlando motorcycle riders.

326.4 miles today
2018.8 miles total

9.362 gallons today
49.385 gallons total