Karen’s Opinion

We are heading to St. Louis to visit our son and daughter in-law and grandpuppies. If it doesn’t rain, we hope to help get some yard work done. If not, we will probably enjoy sitting inside, playing card games, watching television and each of us holding onto our laptops. Does your house look like ours? Everyone sitting around with their laptops?

I had a blast with my sisters and my mom this past weekend. We went to the quilt festival in Cincinnati and shopped until we dropped.
I amazed myself by not buying any more projects. Well, except one. I did buy a pattern to make a pillow. I still have things to make that I bought at the Houston quilt show. That was 2 years ago!
I bought two quilt hangers to display things I have made. I had looked at them online so I saved shipping charges by buying them at the show.

I came home to find that my husband and our daughter had put down laminate flooring in the master bedroom. I love it! We actually took it out of our showroom in our flooring store. The style was discontinued. We put new down in the showroom and this flooring has been sitting in our barn (storage building) for a year, waiting to be installed. That is another advantage to laminate floors. They can be taken up and re-installed! I absolutely love the look in my bedroom. My daughter said I would have been shocked at how much dust was under our bed. I can believe it. We have a Select Comfort bed. It is not easy to vacuum under that type of bed. I think our sinuses will feel better having a hard surface floor in our bedroom. I can’t stop going in there to marvel at it!

That is the sound of the vendor’s cash registers here at the Quilt Festival in Cincinnati. I have been doing my part to help the economy. It has been a fun weekend of shopping and eating at new restaurants. I have been walking a lot so I have been getting a bit of exercise too!

Tonight we walked around the Fountain Square area of downtown Cincinnati. The panhandlers were annoying. We got hit up three times!

We enjoyed seeing the art exhibits displayed around the fountain. They were made from recycled products like plastic shopping bags, pop cans and other items. This tree was made from 2 liter plastic pop bottles.

There were nice restaurants to choose from and we ate at the Rock Bottom Brewery. The food was amazing.

I love to travel but I sure do like my bed. Why is it, no matter where I go, I don’t sleep as well as in my own bed?

My husband and I traveled to Florida to visit our daughter. She wakes up every morning to this:

She wants to move home to Indiana! She misses the seasons. I think Florida is very nice but we weren’t there during the hot summer. The weather was perfect for our week’s visit.

We found a terrific way to beat the heat while traveling on our way home from visiting Branson, Missouri. We took a tour of the Meramec Caverns near Stanton Missouri. The temperature of the cave is a constant 58 degrees. Did you know that Missouri is home to more than 6,000 surveyed caves? Well, it is and we visited just one of them.

Meramec Caverns is open every day of the year and is very affordable. We saved a few dollars by using coupons we found in a pamphlet at the hotel. Free kennels are available for your pets.

The paths we walked on were very well lit and our guide was very informative. I wouldn’t recommend this tour if you have trouble walking. There is one part of the tour where we had to climb 57 steps. That part of the tour is optional but I recommend the climb because the prize at the top of the stairs is awesome. The ancient limestone “Wine Table” formation is only found at Meramec Caverns and in Italy. I can’t remember what our guide said that made this formation unusual. Something about being in water and 4 legs. Can anyone fill me in on this?

Artifacts traceable to the infamous Jesse James were found in the cave. It is said that Jesse James used the cave as a hideout when running from the law.

from the official Meramec Caverns website:

In the summer of 1941, Missouri was in the midst of a rather severe drought. A drought so intense, it not only dropped the rivers and streams above ground, but the water table itself also depleted. At that time, the main level of Meramec Caverns seemed to ‘dead end’ at a wall with a small pool of water spilling out below. With the drop of the water table, the pool of water below the wall receded nearly six inches and allowed a cool, breeze to push into the cave between the wall’s bottom and top of the water. Les Dill was alerted of this change by his cave guides, and, being the adventurous man he was, Dill elected to go under the wall, through the water, and see what was on the other side. Once past the wall, Les was opened to yet another large area of branching networks…even more cave. It was here, too, Les found the artifacts traceable to the infamous Jesse James and the cave was dubbed ‘Jesse James Hideout’.

The Meramec website states that evidence of Jesse and Frank James using the cavern as a hideout consists of sheriffs reports, eye witness accounts, and physical material found inside the cave. Among the artifacts found inside the cave (at Loot Rock) were strong boxes traceable to the train robbery at Gadshill, MO, rifles, and shackles. We were able to see some of these artifacts! I don’t know why I am excited over seeing evidence. It makes me uncomfortable that so much hoopla is made over a law breaker.

A nice, albeit cheesy, tribute is given as a slide-projected American flag appears on the limestone curtain in the theatre room and Kate Smith belts out “God Bless America”.

70 feet high, 60 feet wide and 35 feet thick Theatre Room
Meramec Caverns were introduced to the public as a tourist attraction in 1935 by Lester B. Dill. He is the guy who invented the bumper sticker as a means of promoting the caverns!