Light Up The Night

When the boys were young, we used a Countdown to Christmas calendar. It had a pocket for each day that held a strip of paper with an activity that would help us get ready for Christmas. Even though I haven't used that calendar for many years, I still like the concept of spreading out the holiday activities, and try to do one or two things every day to make the season less hectic.

Tony and I enjoy looking at Christmas lights, so last night after dinner we set out on an adventure to see what we could find.  Our area has several professional lighting displays, but on weekend nights they're really crowded.  We decided to concentrate on smaller displays and avoid the driving gridlock.

Our first destination was in South St. Louis.  Instead of driving on the highway, Tony took the smaller roads.  That made the trip take a bit longer, but we also got a chance to see several interesting displays along the way.  Finally we reached  "Candy Cane Lane", also known as the 6500 block of Murdoch (behind the Chippewa Ted Drewes). There were about a dozen houses on each side of the street, and each one was lit up. The street also had candy-cane colored lights wrapped around the trees and draped across the street from one side to another.

I tried to take a picture with my phone's camera, but I couldn't do the setting justice:

We parked the car and walked up the street to get a better view of the displays.  The homeowners had put a lot of work into their decorations.  There was a group of high school girls handing out candy canes and accepting donations to help build houses on the Gulf Coast.  Next to them was a man playing carols on a accordion.

We got back in our car and left Candy Cane Lane, then drove up and down several other streets in the neighborhood.  It was worth our time; a good percentage of the houses were lit up.  After a few minutes Tony drove back to the main road and we headed east. Our next destination was just short of downtown at the Anheuser Busch brewery.

 It took a bit of guessing to figure out which entrance to the complex to use, but once we got in it was amazing!  The company has been decorating for the holidays for years.  Their displays use more than 80,000 lights to outline the buildings and landscape.   Once again, my camera failed me:

Our last stop was a restaurant, where we got dessert before heading back home.  This time Tony took Interstate 44 west so we could drive past several companies in Fenton that put up big light displays in front of their buildings.  It was an appropriate ending to the night.