The Girls' Group and the Cake Quest (Cakes 1-5)

The Girls' Group and the Cake Quest...that's what Chloe wanted to name this blog. But I thought maybe Tom might join us locating some cakes sometimes, and we might have guest cake questers...so I went with "You Can't Have Your Cake and Eat It Too." I like that, because these cakes definitely aren't edible.

This year marks the 250th birthday for our city of St. Louis! Happy Birthday!! To celebrate, local artists have decorated 238 cakes (to date) which are placed all around the city and surrounding metropolitan area. The cakes are located at special spots. They might be historically significant, big tourist draws, or popular with St. Louisans.

Here's how they decided where the cakes go:

Public vote will determine the first 50 locations that get cakes, and stl250 will determine the rest. There are five broad categories, and each will receive 50 cakes:

Landmark Sites: We have one of the nation's most incredible collections of historic sites and structures. From exceptional landsacpes to monumental structures, St. Louis has a history waiting to be explored.

Heritage and Culture: St. Louis is truly a city of distinct flavors and proud heritage, a diversity worthy of celebration. The 50 Heritage and Culture cakes will commemorate many of St. Louis' great ethnic, religious, community and interest organizations.

The Great Outdoors: The St. Louis region is blessed with a wealth of outdoor resources, some man-made and some natural, and stl250 wants to celebrate them all.

Local Favorite: The 50 Local Favorites cakes encompass the St. Louis region's favorite hangouts and neighborhood treasures. These are the unique restaurants, entertainment highlights and one-of-a-kind places that communities across the region love to show off. 

Innovation: As we discuss the challenges of our past and look towards our future, we celebrate our innovative successes on every scale. For 250 years, St. Louis has been home to businesses and nonprofit organizations that have made ain indelible stamp locally, nationally, and internationally. We seek to honor these trailblazers.

The girls and I started our St. Louis cake "scavenger hunt" today, by reading Happy Birthday, St. Louis! by Carolyn Mueller.

Then I printed a list of cake locations. (That's how I found out that there are currently only 238 cakes.)

http://www.stl250.org/cake-leaderboard.aspx

Then we decided to find the cakes that were located close to our house. This is our first cake; located at the Harley Davidson on Lemay Ferry. As we visit the cakes, we will have other pictures of the fun things that we do at some of the locations. There won't just be cake pictures on this blog!

Which category does this cake fit? Local Favorite? Innovation? Popular Vote? I can't figure it out. Oh well, a cake is a cake. Holly wanted to buy a motorcycle while we were there, but I told her she'd have to wait until she was older.

The next cake we found was at the Jefferson Barracks Civil War Museum. There are three cakes right around Jefferson Barracks, and we found them all. 

This cake is at the Mississippi River Greenway, which is part of Jefferson Barracks park. We had never been here before. It's really beautiful!

The girls decided that they wanted to follow the path and see where it goes. It was such a gorgeous day, we decided to explore!

Can you see the river? This was a great opportunity for the girls and me to talk about how we live right by the Mississippi River! It was really pretty today!

Across the bridge from the river, there was this...pond...or flooded area. We saw deer, and a turtle! (Holly thought the deer was a kangaroo.)

There was a lot of cottonwood in the air. It really looked like snow, and the girls had fun chasing after "snowflakes."

The cake at the Jefferson Barracks Visitor's Center was really hard to find. It's on North Road, and there are two North Roads...one of which is right in the middle of the cemetary. We saw a big funeral procession, and of course there were LOTS of headstones. So we had a good conversation about soldiers, and how they protect our country, and why that's important. And we finally found the cake.

The girls were getting tired of cake questing for today, so we decided to get a snack. They didn't realize that I was taking them to another cake location. This one was downtown, at Crown Candy. Crown Candy is a very popular lunch and ice cream spot. Definitely a St. Louis landmark, open since 1913. Holly got to put the money in the parking meter. 

The girls gave the ice cream a big "thumbs up." They had fun looking for cakes. Chloe found the Harley Davidson cake and the Crown Candy cake first, and Holly found two of the Jefferson Barracks cakes first. It's fun to see who can spot the cakes before I park the car!

Chloe and Holly thought that finding cakes was exciting today. They found that we can sometimes do fun things at the spot where we find a cake, and other times, we just take a picture. That's OK!

How many of the cakes do you think we can find this summer? We plan to find some each week!