Frankly, The Frank Was Great

Today's adventure happened because I had a hankering for a good hot dog. 😁

I was looking for a dog  that was plump and juicy and had a casing that "snapped" when I bit into it. They're standard at barbecues. However, there is no option to barbecue in our condo development. When I did some research last night I quickly realized that the go-to restaurants for good hot dogs were closed for the Labor Day holiday.

This morning I was reading an email news compilation from St. Louis Magazine. Close to the bottom of there were links to several articles in the magazine; given my recent search for a good dog I thought the one called Hot Dogs or Brats? was timely. In the article several local restaurateurs weighed in on the topic. One of them (Gerard Craft) mentioned his current favorite was Wally's, which is an enormous gas station and travel center less than ten minutes from my house.

Although I was pretty sure I knew what the answer would be, I asked Hubby Tony if he would be interesting in combine a walk with a trip to Wally's for lunch. He said yes, so I started investigating what we could do.

Wally's is right off Interstate 44 in Fenton. It's not too far from several county parks along the Meramec River. Buder County Park was the closest, a little over a mile away from our final destination. That's where we decided to go.

We left the car in the parking lot at Wally's. According to my map app, if we were driving the trip would have involved multiple turns. However, on foot the walk was a straight shot down one road, parts of which had been closed after the 1993 flood.

Faint road lines and a directional sign

Buder Park is in the river flood plain. I had never been there before, but soon figured out it had soccer fields, a radio controlled model plane flying field, drone flying area, a small archery range, and one pavilion. Tony and I stopped to watch the planes before continuing on the loop road around the park. The last part ran next to the river and we could see glimpses of the trail on the other bank.

When we returned to Wally's both Tony and I were ravenous. We did not stop at the huge merchandise side of the store, but headed straight to the bathroom to wash our hands (passing through the liquor section on the way). With clean hands we passed by the huge soft drink wall, the jerky bar, the pizza station, and the popcorn station on our way to the barbecue carving/sandwich station. Both of us grabbed a foil-wrapped hot dog, but chose slightly different toppings (mustard for both of us; onions and relish for me, pickles and hot sauce for Tony). I decided we needed a bag of kettle chips to share, but I passed on anything from the bakery station, ice cream counter, or coffee bar.

We took the food back to the car. I opened up my dog. It had been cut in half and griddled so that all the surfaces were nicely browned. When I took the first bite the casing popped like it was supposed to, and it was a good thing I had a napkin handy to catch the juice.

Five years ago today: Get Out Of The House, Get It Done, Get Home