We’ve now been in St. Louis for well over a week this visit, and it’s so far been a jam-packed experience full of friendship, adventure, being a tourist, family and technology updates.
But first.. how we got here after our meandering through Arkansas.
Harvest Hosts Stays
We love staying places that aren’t traditional RV parks whenever we can. When we’re looking ahead we seek out opportunities like state parks, Army Corp of Engineers, boondocking and driveway surfing.
We’ve been on a most excellent streak but its been a few stops since we stayed at a Harvest Hosts location.
Harvest Hosts reaches out to wineries, vineyards, farms and museums who have parking for RVs to more formally make an invitation for members to park overnight. It provides a really unique way for us to visit awesome locations. We’ve really been enjoying our membership as a way to mix up our stays.
With our caravanning buddies being brand new HarvestHosts members, we made it a priority to make a stop at one together.
We spotted OOVVDA Winery just north of Springfield as a potential spot and called ahead to see if a stay was possible. No problem they said, and as a bonus – they were having live music that day!
We arrived, got parked, grabbed a bottle of cherry wine and sat down for an afternoon of tunes and friendship.
That evening, we were also communicating with new to the road nomads Kelly & Anna of SmallHouseBigWorld.com who were enjoying a Harvest Hosts stay just a bit east of us. They checked in with their host, who extended an invitation for our little roaming crew to join up the next evening.
After a beautiful drive down narrow twisty windy roads, we arrived to Wenwood Farm Winery. We had two video casts scheduled (our monthly exclusive Mobile Internet Aficionados chat, followed by our ‘Costs of Full Time RVing‘ public topic) – so we got right to setting up.
This was a location where having both Verizon and AT&T, and wireless cellular boosting gear made a HUGE difference (our current Mobile Internet Arsenal).
Kelly had reported that there was no Verizon signal, but he was getting a smidgeon of AT&T LTE… which matched what our Coverage? app was telling us to expect. Sure enough, without our Wilson Mobile 4G booster, we would not have been able to stream a video cast. But with the gear, we were able to broadcast for over 2 hours in HD without much of a glitch.
Technology… it just rocks 🙂
(By the way, if you haven’t been following our RV Mobile Internet News Center – Wilson rebranded earlier this year to weBoost, and there are some great deals on close-out Wilson equipment. There’s also finally some new 4G boosters starting to hit the market that we have in for review.)
We had a great evening hanging out with Kelly & Anna and Forrest & Mary, and in the morning got to meet the owners of the winery. What a great spot, great people, fantastic wines and a lovely lovely location – we’ll definitely be making this a stop in the future.
St. Louis Fun
Our reason for coming into St. Louis is always family – it’s where Chris’ family is mostly located and his parents now summer here (previously it was their full time home, now they winter in Florida). It’s been a constant stop over point for us, and with each visit I fall more and more in love with the city.
And we just love sharing it with friends.
My mother had booked a flight to come stay with Chris’ folks – so we wanted to be here for her first visit to the midwest.
Forrest & Mary hadn’t spent too much time in St. Louis. The timing worked out great to share one ouf favorite cities with people we love.
We hit the ground running playing tour guides – taking them to some of our favorite places. A quick introduction to Forest Park, frozen custard at Ted Drewes, a brewery tour at Annheiser Busch, Grant’s Farm, a trip to the top of the Arch, a Cardinals ball game and the Missouri Botanical Gardens.
There was also lots of dining around town to be had!
Since we’ve now been to St. Louis many times, I’m putting together a guide to St. Louis for RVers with our top picks for RV parking and things to do. So we’ll share more details of our adventures in that upcoming post.
What’s Next?
It’s been an absolutely fantastic visit with lots of marvelous memories made.We’ll spend a couple more days waiting on some packages to arrive, and then we’ll continue on northward to Elkhart where our bus projects will begin later this month.
Aside from all of the family and tourist stuff, we’ve been deep in planning all of the bus renovations we’ll be tackling in addition to the re-painting.
The Alaskan trip is coming together, with just the return leg left to book – we’re monitoring one-way southbound cruises continually coming down in price to be even cheaper than taking the Alaskan ferry. We’ll snag one soon.
Also, while we’re in Vancouver, BC we’ll be hosting a small casual meet-up on Monday, June 8. If you’re in the area and interested – let us know.
So whew.. been busy busy busy! But it’s all good and awesome.
The next couple of weeks we’ll be diving deep into work projects on our way into Indiana to make up for all this play time we’ve been enjoying. We have some mobile internet equipment testing for our Mobile Internet Aficionados members, some app updates and continued roll-out projects for Xscapers (which if you haven’t checked it out lately, the new website launched recently – it’s looking really sweet!)
Cherie, you and Chris are a wealth of information. I’m planning my way to becoming Nomads like yourselves. Figuring all the details to get it underway. Thanks again for all your work, paving the way for future Nomads.
No website yet. Enjoy reading your blog and learning from you. Just stopped by to say that the xscapers site is looking great and it seems easier to use. Looking forward to more updates.
Enjoy alaska if u get a chance do the train trip at skagway
There will be a lot of trains along our journey 🙂
I can’t believe we’ve yet to make a Harvest Host stop. Joined, but just never made it. Gotta go do this!
Nina
I sometimes forget to login and see if there are viable options along our route.. but usually pleased when we do 🙂
In St.Louis try St.Peters RV Park. No issue with my 45′ trailer and 30′ HDT. And it is reasonably convenient when passing through. We usually stop there. Would be crowded in summer.
As a stopover, it would likely be OK. Considering we’re visiting family, our typical stay is 3-4 weeks. At between $700 & $930/month, that’s just out of my comfort zone price-wise. We had been paying $400 + electric at our previous park, and there were shade trees, a county park along the Meramec within 5 miles, huge grassy sites, & a large meadow behind for the dogs.
St. Peters looks to be on the way west side of St. Louis. Considering all our family is southeast St. Louis, that would be a not great location for us. The pickings are slim and pricey in town, that is for sure.
The wineries look great, but I could never park on that grass….I’d be stuck for sure….
They said they regularly have their delivery trucks (big semis) turn around in that field. We walked it thoroughly before driving down there. Always a touch scary 🙂 But it was pretty darn firmly packed.
Ted Drewes and a Cardinals games sounds about perfect to me! I’ll be on the road full-timing in about a year and 1/2 and will definitely be going back to Missouri to partake in both. It doesn’t look like Harvest Hosts has any locations in the area around Hermann, Missouri. Have you guys been any where around there and, if so, were there good campgrounds there?
I think we’ve only stayed at one campground near-isn Hermann. It was a free campground without hook-ups in the national forrest up that way. We just overnighted after a visit to St. Louis on our way west.
I wish I could’ve gone to that baseball game. The St Louis stadium is one of the MLB bucket list sites for me, but it just wasn’t in our timeline. Maybe next time!
Meeting up was awesome. Hope our paths cross again in the fall / winter!
The stadium should be there when you return .. it’s definitely worth going to. I’m not even a baseball fan, and make a point every visit.
Look forward to future rendezvouses, and so glad we had a night to connect.
We’re looking forward to hitting some places where our old friends have lived for years and getting the “locals’ tour” which is always the best! You sure make St Louis sound like heaven 🙂 We’re excited about using Harvest Hosts, planning to join when we launch to take advantage of the whole year’s membership. Those wineries are beautiful.
We love getting a local’s perspective too.. our favorite. It’s fun to have a few places however where we feel local-enough to be the tour guides. Always fun to re-visit a city through new eyes.
Wow! Talk about a whirl-wind pace! You’ve been busy indeed. Perhaps I’m mistaken but I thought full timing was supposed to be a slower paced lifestyle? Lol!
Thanks for the heads up on the Wilson rebranding as I’m gonna start looking into a booster for my vehicle, both for my road warrior work use age and recreational usage in the hinterlands.
As a kid I grew up on a farm so I’ve always been attracted to the Harvest Hosts group. I think it’s a great opportunity fo all involved, in a number of ways. Good to see RVers utilizing these opportunities.
I’m looking forward to your Alaska trip info, and the posts of the trip as you experience it, later this summer. I’ve been there 3 times myself, all for short trips, and feel I could spend an entire season there, spring to autumn. It’s truly amazing, to say the least.
I’m looking forward to read about your tech updates too. I’m in need of updating and upgrading some of my own tech this year, mainly for work purposes. Update iPhone later this year, whether or not to update the iPad later this year, jump in on a new Mac, but not sure which model to get yet,,,, you get the idea. My wallet is in pain now so I better get back to work!
Happy travels! 🙂
Hahaha.. slower pace of life. Very funny 🙂 Hasn’t been that way for us, but it is a great way to get out and experience more while still having your home to come back to recharge. Suits us great.
Not too much to report on the tech updates – mostly just software and OS stuff this time around.
SO looking forward to your St. Louis post. It’s where I’m from originally, & we used to go back at least once a year. However, we haven’t been since 2013 (when we stayed in Edwardsville, IL) because of issues at the RV park where we previously stayed. Can’t get a 40′ 5th wheel & an HDT in just anywhere! It’s hard to be at a park when the family is 40-50 miles away. Anxiously awaiting the next post!
St. Louis does have some slim picking with RV Parks in the area.. that is for sure.
I have the same problem as you, Cherie, with the St. Peters location. All my family is in Arnold/Fenton/Eureka/Mehlville, & being an hour out is very inconvenient. I’d have it made if they lived on the west side of the metroplex; I have a high school friend with acres of ground in Warrenton!