Honeymoon- Day 4

Fortunately, Holiday Inn Express provides free breakfast! After a pretty tasty plate of biscuits & gravy, sausage, cinnamon rolls, and bagels, we headed to historical downtown St. Charles for some exploring and shopping along the main street.

A park lies along a river behind the main street. It covers a route traveled by Lewis, Clark, and Sacajawea! It was a lovely day for a stroll, and an old (currently unused) train station provided a nice backdrop for a picture.

Farther along our walk in the park, we stumbled across this sculpture of Lewis & Clark. I thought the bird perched on the hat was rather humorous and cute! (zoom in)

The park was part of a rather long route for biking/hiking (the Katy Trail), so we traversed a block back to the main street and ended up at Trailhead Brewery, a small microbrewery/restaurant. We ordered a couple pints to share, from the taps pictured above.

We spotted an open door to the brewing area, so after finishing our drinks, we took a look. The head brewer, Jennifer, invited us to walk past her grain barrels to get a closer perspective. We felt a little odd going down the stairs to an employees-only section unchaperoned, but she quickly caught up with us and gave us an insider's insight! What was particularly interesting was she said she applied for a job with a brewery in Michigan and had an interview the following week. And, Founders was one of her favorite micro-brews, so we had a bit to talk about when we found that out too!

Following the brewery, we visited a spice shop at the recommendation of Jennifer (the brewer), where we bought some sea salt for a new grinder we received from our wedding, and bought an eclair and chocolates from a nearly-next-door bakery. We also bought some treats for Barley (Pat & Jackie's black lab) at a homemade dog treat store (before we visited the brewery), browsed a store with Life is Good merchandise (cool stuff, but too overpriced to buy anything), had an outdoor lunch at the same bistro/cafe we bought dessert from the night before, and as you can see above, stopped at an ice cream parlor for dessert!

Mid-afternoon we stopped back in St. Louis on our way home to pick up Patrick's credit card, and thought about the irony of Courtney arriving only a couple hours later to the airport, on her way to Fort Leonard Wood. We texted a few encouraging messages to her during our drive back, as she sat waiting for connecting flights.

So, it wasn't a fairytale honeymoon, but we were happy for the time away together, and had some good times. Besides, if we're lucky, the not-to-distant future might hold a trip to London for us. But, we'll see.....