Last weekend, Wendy and I took a trip to St. Louis where I got to cross a couple of items off my bucket list!
I've always wanted to visit the Cahokia Mounds, which are the remains of a large Native American city that once had a population of 20,000 people. (You might recall some of my previous posts about Native American mounds, here, here, and here.) I usually think about going to see it when my birthday rolls around, but that's in the peak of summer, which means it's often 100 degrees and humid in St. Louis, and that never sounds appealing. But, last month one of my favorite comic book creators, J.M. DeMatteis, announced he would be at the St. Louis GalaxyCon (a comic book convention) in October. I've always wanted to meet him, and this is the first realistic chance I've had. (You might recall some of my previous posts about DeMatteis, here, here, and here.) The opportunity to cross two items off my bucket list was too good to pass up.
So, Friday morning Wendy and I drove five hours from Chicago to St. Louis. As soon as we got there, we went straight to Cahokia. It was much bigger than I expected. We had to drive around to see all the parts of it. At our first stop, we climbed to the top of Monks Mound, which was enormous! There were around 150 steps to climb up. It felt kind of sacred climbing to the top, like we were ascending into the heavens. (It reminded me of my climb to the top of the Coba Mayan pyramid in Mexico, back in 2016.) This photo is halfway up:
At the top, we had a fantastic view of downtown St. Louis:
After that we drove to what was called Woodhenge, a reconstruction of a circular structure used as a solar calendar. Finally, we toured the central plaza area, which had a bunch of other, smaller mounds. The only disappointing thing is that the visitor center was closed for renovations. We thought of a few questions that we probably could have gotten answered there had it been open. Regardless, I really enjoyed the Cahokia experience.
After checking into our hotel and getting some dinner, we went to the St. Louis Art Museum, which had free admission, and was open until 9pm. We walked around looking at art until our legs were exhausted. The coolest moment was when we were in the Egyptian room, and a very friendly employee suggested we kneel down and look underneath a raised coffin lid. We saw a whole set of hieroglyphics and art that he said represented the mummy's obituary:
Then we returned to our hotel and called it a day.
Saturday morning we headed to GalaxyCon, which was at the downtown convention center. Finding a parking spot was a big worry, but thanks to Wendy we found one at a parking garage right across the street. We parked and quickly found a long, long line of people stretching out the front door!
Thankfully it moved fairly quickly, but after we were past the halfway point, we discovered we didn't need to be in that line. We needed to be in a much shorter line that had all of four people in it! I have no idea what the first line was for, but we happily traded it for the shorter one. We bought our tickets and got our passes:
And then we were inside! There was an enormous exhibition room with all kinds of vendors, celebrities, comic book creators, and fans dressed in all kinds of costumes.
I started to get worried after we had walked around a bit without seeing DeMatteis, but fortunately we found him. He didn't have a sign with his name behind him because the organizers had somehow lost it. But I recognized him from the various pictures he's posted on his blog. I summoned up my courage, walked up, and introduced myself. He was very patient as I nervously and awkwardly explained how much I enjoy his writing. He answered a couple of questions I had, and was very gracious letting Wendy take a picture of me with him:
I brought along two books for him to sign. One was his classic graphic novel, Moonshadow, and the other was his children's fantasy novel, Imaginalis. He was charging $10 per autograph, which was quite reasonable. And he seemed very pleased when I pulled out Imaginalis for him to sign; he said it didn't get much buzz when it came out.
It was a very pleasant experience meeting one of my favorite writers, and I was quite happy.
After that we walked around to see the rest of the convention. There was one comic book creator who was standing behind his table holding a sign saying "May I tell you about my comics?" So, we walked up to him and asked about his comics. His name was Trevor Mueller, and two of his graphic novels sounded really interesting so I bought them, and he signed them for me, as well. Later, I learned he actually lives in Chicago, and next month is going to be at a library comic-con not too far from us! Kind of funny.
At this point we took a break, and after looking at the schedule, decided to go to a Q&A with William Shatner. He's 94 years old and still traveling around and giving talks!
He talked for a while about various moments from his long career, and then started taking questions from the audience. After someone asked a question, he would tell some seemingly unrelated story, then wonder why he told that story, then remember why, and relate it back to the question. Then he turned the tables and started asking the person questions about their life, trying to make a connection with them. When a woman said she was divorced, he asked why she got divorced ("infidelity on both sides" was her answer), then he asked why she had an affair (she said she was 21 and "it was the era of 'if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with'"), and she also said she just re-married the man she divorced! This was absolutely wild, but you could see Shatner was connecting with her and bringing out these incredible stories. Because of these back and forths, he only had time to answer questions from 3 people. It was interesting!
After getting a late lunch, and walking through the convention a bit more, we decided we were done with GalaxyCon. Our next stop was the St. Louis Zoo, because it had free admission. Our legs were quite tired, though, so mostly we rode a train around the zoo and checked out the gift shop. Then we headed back to our hotel, where we rested our weary legs. Later, we went out for frozen custard, and later still we ordered a pizza. After 2 straight days of 11,000+ steps, our legs were exhausted.
The next morning we drove home. It was a short, but action-packed trip and was very fun!