On Sunday, Anne and I rode Trailnet’s Mother’s Day ride. We got 35 miles. This is one of their community rides, which I learned are separate from Trailnet’s bicycle fun club bike rides. The ride started from South Grand.

We rode to the starting point and by doing that we actually rode that last part of the long route first. The ride passed through many of Saint Louis’ historical south side neighborhoods. We passed the house on Flora that our friends, Alice and Chris use to live in and rode through the Compton Heights and Lafayette Square neighborhoods. We stopped for iced coffee at Park Avenue Coffee, the first rest stop. The ride worked its way down to the river, then south to Bellerive Park. This park has a nice view of the Mississippi and we could see all the barge traffic parked out on it, waiting for the water level to come back down.

After Bellerive, we rode by Carondelet Park and took the Des Peres River trail to Webster. The flooding Mississippi had backed up the Des Peres at least as far as we rode along it. After Webster the route went through Maplewood. We left the course and had a late Mother’s Day brunch at the Schlafly Bottleworks. Afterwards, we went home, instead of repeating the last part of the course.

In the first picture, Anne is shown before the Saint Louis Budweiser Brewery. This building was built-in 1917 and is officially known as the Bevo Packaging Plant. The second photo shows one of Anheuser-Busch’s Bevo Fox sculptures. These whimsical fox sculptures are perched on each corner of the building, all munching on chicken legs and holding a mug of Bevo, a non-alcohol cereal-based beverage that was produced during the Prohibition era.