Okay, significant software messing around here but it fits the image. A long time ago, St. Louis was the fourth largest city in the US, after New York, Philadelphia and Chicago. I won't go into what happened since, but in 1904 we had a World's Fair (Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis) and the second modern Olympics after Athens. This is one of the few remaining buildings, known to us as the World's Fair Pavilion. It is well restored and you can rent it for events.
This is the bottom of Art Hill, the long slope that's the place to go sledding in this town. The body of water at the bottom is known as the Grand Lagoon. When we got heavy snows (it happened), the paved path would be covered and the reckless could - and did - fly straight into the water (and it's more than a meter drop). Eventually, the park put a line of hay bales at the bottom. Now it's spaced bales with that orange net stretch stuff.
Forest Park lies between our two major universities, St. Louis U. and Washington U. When I was an undergrad at SLU, we used to swipe plastic trays from the cafeteria to use as minimal sleds if there was a big dump. Kids would zoom out of control and occasionally someone would shoot off the end. I saw it happen.
There is a cold drizzle falling as I write this Monday evening but temperatures are cleanly above freezing. Any snow cover is gone, although a few decaying snowmen remain. Art Hill, the long slope below the art museum, was patchy over the weekend but bare now. Children will try their sleds on anything available.
A crosswalk in Forest Park, leading to a walking trail through the trees. Sometimes we just have to be satisfied with patchy, sloppy snow.
I have not looked up the statistics but it seems like we get a lot less snow than we did years ago, and what we get doesn't last as long. We got a little Friday night and Saturday morning, enough to cover the grass, but the temperature was just above freezing. Still, families brought the kids to Art Hill, the long slope below our art museum. It's STL's premier sledding venue.
