Vacation Day #12 : Wednesday, July 2 : The vacation series continues... Our plan on this day was to 'make our own float trip'. Alex and I were going to take the inflatible boat with trolling motor and put it in to the Cuivre River, taking it upstream until the battery died on our trolling motor. Then we were going to just float back down river to our car. However, by this time Alex was getting pretty exhausted from his activities of the last couple of days, so we decided to put this adventure on hold. I am still looking forward to doing this, even though there are some mild risks. Namely, we could sink. Nevertheless, I still want to try it on my next vacation segment. Alex and I did try out the boat in the Lake and it worked great. In fact a bunch of kids tried it out, driving all around the cove, and had a blast. Some of the parents even gave their young children rides in it like it was a little amusement park attraction or something.

In the end Alex just relaxed during the day. In the evening we got into the Alfa and drove back down to Cadet to watch Terminator 3 on the drive-in theatre screen at Starlite. It was a safe trip both ways, though we didn't get back until quite early in the morning.

On the way down Alex and I spotted an amazing vertical cloud formation that looked like a horse rearing on it's back legs. Here is the photograph that Alex took. The photo didn't turn out that great, but the cloud formation was really well defined and definitely looked like a horse.


Here is a shot of my Alfa parked in the front row of the drive-in waiting for the show to start. I brought along a deep cell battery, power inverter, stereo system, and a set of excellent Bose speakers to listen to the movie with. You can see all of this nonsense on the back of the car.


Here's a photograph of two of the friendly people who were making our dinner in the grille at the drive-in. It was excellent food and reasonably priced.


Here's a shot of Alex sitting on the front of the Alfa waiting for the movie to start.


Alex and I watched the movie lying down on the hood of the car. Many people showed up with blankets and lawn chairs, almost no one watched the film literally from within their car. It was a really great turn out for a Wednesday night, with many families making it a night of entertainment. While it certainly was not the most ideal format to watch a film it made up for it completely by being such a unique experience. I was distracted from the movie most of the evening by the night sky. Lying back on the hood of my car the night sky was breathtaking. You really get the sense of remoteness once it got really dark that far out in the country. I took a few photographs of the projected film, but like always none of them really turned out.

I strongly recommend visiting the Starlite drive-in to anyone. I want to get together a large group of people, say one or two mini-vans full, and plan an evening around it. I would think a bunch of my 16mm friends would find it a lot of fun to do. If you scroll down a ways there are more photographs of the Starlite drive-in from when I first discovered it.

Vacation Day #13 : Wednesday, July 3 : On Thursday Alex and I drove down to my father's house to play a round of golf with him in Belle. Alex did very well and even drove the ball over 140 yards on one hole, beating my own best drive on that hole. After the round of golf we had a nice lunch at a country diner in Bland and then headed back. That was pretty much the whole day since it was about 110 miles each way.

Up next is the July 4th weekend which was the end of my relaxing vacation. I will update the blog with those three days when I get back from Seattle this weekend. My next vacation is the first two weeks of August and I am driving the family to Florida. I am taking so much vacation because in the last 4 years at my current job I took almost no vacation time. I had accrued two months of vacation and was about to max out my hours. I just decided it was time to take a break and spend some quality time with my family to make up, in some small way, for the many, many, many, weekends they never saw me in the last year.



Popular posts from this blog

Planetside Screenshots

Image
I realize that this post is going to cause some Web-Wiplash, but I think that is ok. For years I have held onto some old Planetside screenshots that I wanted to post online some day. After scouring an old hard drive yesterday these are the ones I came up with. Still, I know I am missing many of the screenshots I really wanted to keep. Especially ones from when the game was very early in development. I designed the entire client side game engine myself and I had a lot of fun during the development process. One of my regrets is that, in many respects, the final game did not look nearly as visually impressive as it did at certain points during development. There were a number of reasons for this. One was from a technology stand point. Most developers of an MMO game engine might assume it would be reasonable to stream data in as a player moved around the environment. That was certainly my original design. However, once the game got into heavy beta testing there was a strong push to get eve
Read more

Ten Reasons *NOT* to become a Freemason

Image
"Why I became (and proudly remain) an 'antient' Freemason" Well, I see no reason I cannot make a Freemason themed post. Last evening I attended a third degree at Naphtali lodge. It was my candidate being raised, my friend William Bean. It was an incredible night, especially since we had 28 Master Masons present for the event which was held at the incredible Masonic Temple in midtown Saint Louis. My friends Right Worshipful Brother Chris Neubold, Russ Tinker, Densel Webb, and Fred Statler drove down all of the way from Wentzville and Troy; over an hour drive each way. I acted as the Senior Steward and Junior Deacon for the ceremony. This was the largest gathering of Masons we have had in as long as anyone could remember for a degree. It is so very gratifying to see Naphtali growing and area members supporting the lodge. After the degree Jesse's wife Meryl provided a lovely dinner in the dining room where we shared fellowship and conversation. All of this had me thi
Read more