Dani's Dirt

When I was a little girl, “Meet Me in St. Louis” was one of my favorite musicals. It’s probably strange that a 7-year-old knew this movie so well, but I’ve never been of the norm. What can I say, Judy Garland is my home gurl.

Besides childhood memories of twirling around and belting out “Meet me in St. Louis, Louis” daily, St. Louis, as a city, has become special to me. Not only does it serve as the somewhat halfway between me and My Someone, it was also where our first date went down.

That’s right, November 2012, I nervously drove 4 1/2 hours to spend the day with a blue-eyed guy with dimples and an accent much twangier then mine, who unbeknownst to me would become my soon-to-be-husband.

Our first date was the Mother Ship of awesomeness in the land of first dates. We met up in the Gateway Arch parking lot, had lunch at an old candy/sandwich shop and then spent the next few hours at the St. Louis Zoo.

If you like zoo’s, I highly recommend this one. It’s free to enter and it’s pretty decent sized, plus they have a large penguin exhibit …and anything with penguins is a win.

After the zoo, we made our way back to arch where we ended up racing up the stairs to the arch. I’m fairly certain he slowed his gait to make it look like I was holding my own, but I like to think I conquered those stairs in my Ugg boots.

What I failed to mention to My Someone is that I’m claustrophobic and sometimes drastic changes in elevation cause me to faint… So after he paid for our tickets, we had stood in line and were about to board the very tiny pod they stick 5 five people in to send up the arch, I nonchalantly mentioned those two tiny details.

“WHAT?!?!?” he said. “We do not have to do this.”

But determination to not be a pansy kicked in and up into the arch we went.

I just stayed pretty silent… and counted …and may have held my breath.

Claustrophobia and elevation sickness are worth pushing through to make it to the top of the arch. It’s amazing. Fair warning, it does feel like it’s swaying.

Afterwards, we had dinner at The Spaghetti Warehouse, which is in an old warehouse (Bet you didn’t see that coming). And in the words of My Someone it was, “Badass.”

Even after spending the entire day together, we ended up talking on the phone most of the drive home… and well, it’s history after that.

So recently when a bad case of “missing yous” overtook #DaniSquared, a plan was devised to clear our schedules and meet in our semi-halfway point for the day. Driving to St. Louis, I wondered what the heck we were going to do, I mean how were we supposed to top our first date.

Well, St. Louis doesn’t disappoint.

I am not about to tell you we eloped… Apparently, everyone else thought I’d return with a new last name. Still rockin’ “Beard” for a few more months y’all.

While we didn’t get married, we did play a competitive round of miniature golf, consumed snow cones, experienced St. Louis from a helicopter and toured the Anheuser-Busch Brewery.

Helicopter’s, Clydesdale’s and free beer. Does it get better than that?

I’ll let my not-so-great iPhone photos tell the rest of the story.

I know I say how lucky I am quite a bit, but my goodness that fella of mine can throw together an awesome date.

…and no, the tourism department of St. Louis is not paying me to write this. Wouldn’t that be awesome? *cough* *cough*

Fun fact for y’all, I’m finishing this post from the Tulsa International Airport right before I board my flight to another adventure…

It’s going to be epic.

…and no, we aren’t eloping.