Burger King (Stadium Drive)
4200 Stadium DriveIt’s competition weekend again!
It feels like it’s always competition weekend in the spring. As soon as we get done with one, we’re getting ready for the next.
This past weekend, L and J headed to the Chicago area for Ladybug. They left Wednesday night after work because of space constraints at the Homewood-Flossmoor Ice Arena.
There isn’t a lot of space there so it’s hard to get ready at the rink which is how we usually do things. They wanted to be able to get ready at a hotel before heading to the rink which meant they’d need to go over Wednesday night.
B didn’t go to this competition because we didn’t know he’d be ready for dance when we signed L up. The competition then filled up really fast and they closed registration early so it was too late by the time his coaches said he was ready to go.
J’s parents came up to help me with B after school Thursday and Friday nights. They typically feed the kids when they pick them up from school so I knew when I was heading home that B had already eaten.
I didn’t really feel like cooking and I was contemplating my options on the way home. Fast food was fine because I didn’t want to spend a lot of money.
I ended up pulling in to the Burger King on Stadium Drive to the east of Seneca Drive on the west side of Kalamazoo. Why Burger King? Well..because do you know how long it’s been since I’ve eaten at a Burger King? No, you don’t because you don’t actually know me but I don’t think there’s a Burger King blog on this site and I’ve been doing this for almost 16 years.
Bricks at Campau Corner
6785 Whitneyville RoadThere are days I don’t have my office partner in Kalamazoo. Those days are usually spent working alone on special projects or sometimes, meeting colleagues from the Grand Rapids office.
Some days, they come down here. Some days, I go to Grand Rapids.
Last Wednesday was a go to Grand Rapids day for me.
Well….not actually Grand Rapids. I was heading to Alto to meet a colleague for a project. I left a little early because I had heard there is a Which Wich opening near Gun Lake Casino and I wanted to see if it was open yet.
It is not so that kind of changed my lunch plans.
I actually didn’t really have any other plans and I wasn’t passing a lot on my way to the job site. I could have doubled back towards Grand Rapids but then I came across a gas station and my lunch problem was solved.
Bricks at Campau Corner is part of a small chain of Bricks gas stations in Kent County. This one is located on the corner of Whitneyville Avenue and 68th Street. This used to just be a Marathon Station but it was rebuilt and rebranded as just Campau Corner sometime in 2010/2011. At that point, there was a Subway in the southern part of the building. There was also a small shopping plaza built on the north end of the property that initially housed a pizza place and a couple of financial offices. Those are now meat market and a pizza house/pub.
Re-Fresh Market
1070 Arcadia LoopHow about something a little closer to home?
I know…when I travel I get outside of my geographic boundaries but…you know…I’ve said it before…I treat this blog like a journal. Plus, I usually get 100’s of more page views for blog posts when I travel…especially if it’s a big brand.
Anyway, I’m back in Kalamazoo…for a little while anyway, so I can sneak in one before I’m off to a skating competition or something somewhere.
I made a run to the WMU Student Bookstore on my lunch break last week. I wanted to look at hockey National Championship merchandise and since I had some free time, I figured why not.
I didn’t find what I was looking for but since I was in the building, I figured I’d just grab lunch.
I’ve blogged about a couple of the restaurants in the new student center before. There’s Mi Pi which is kind of like a Blaze Pizza and there’s Fuego Verde which is kind of like a Chipotle.
There’s a third option that I didn’t even realize was there. I was walking through the Student Center a few weeks but I came in what might be considered the “front door” off Arcadia Loop instead of coming in through the doors near Sangren Hall like I usually do.
Re-Fresh Market is just that. It’s a market. It’s located on the first floor of the Western Michigan University Student Center on Arcadia Loop near the center of campus. Like I just mentioned, you can access the student center either from the south off Arcadia Loop which brings you in on the bottom floor near Re-Fresh or you can come in from the north off Michigan Avenue which brings you on the second floor on the other side of the building. Whatever you choose, Re-Fresh is kind of separated from the rest of the food court with an actual entrance into an enclosed space so it’s more like a store than a food court offering.
Read more…Bojangles (Normal)
2007 N. Main StreetSunday was a travel day.
A colleague and I had been in St. Louis since Tuesday and we finished up with our work late Saturday night. We had planned on getting up around 9 AM and starting the drive home. But we were tired and ended up not leaving until 10 AM.
The drive from St. Louis to Kalamazoo is a little over six hours. It’s not a bad drive. It’s all highway so the time goes pretty fast.
Co-worker grabbed Starbucks for breakfast before we left town but I hadn’t eaten anything. I wasn’t really hungry and, honestly, I was just planning on stopping at Wally’s in Pontiac, IL to get gas and grab a sandwich.
The something happened.
As we were driving on I-55 near Lincoln, IL, I saw a billboard for a Loves Travel Center in Normal about a half hour up the road. That’s not really unusual but what was unusual was the restaurant in that Loves.
It was a Bojangles. And I was surprised because I didn’t realize Bojangles had restaurants that far north.
Bojangles in Normal is right off I-55 on North Main Street. The Loves Travel Center is a fairly recent development, opening in late 2022, on the north side of the highway. The Bojangles restaurant is in the main building on the south side. It’s one of three locations in Illinois but the one that’s furthest north.
Imo’s Pizza (Central West End)
4479 Forest Park AvenueI had to do it.
One last night in St. Louis. I had to do it.
I had to get another Imo’s Pizza.
We got back to our hotel after a long day of work around 11:00. I was hungry and thirsty but didn’t really know where to go. There were a couple of bars in the area that were still open but that felt like too much. I really just wanted to put on a pair of sweatpants, eat, and go to bed.
I was really excited to find an Imo’s Pizza within walking distance. It was about a ten minute walk and a St. Louis pizza before leaving the town the next day sounded amazing.
Imo’s Pizza in the Central West End neighborhood is on Forest Park Avenue and Taylor Avenue is a small shopping center. At 11:30 at night, it was the only thing open when I walked up. This Central West End location is one of about 100 Imo’s location in Missouri, Illinois, and Kansas.
Read more…Shake Shack (St. Louis)
60 N. Euclid AvenueGetting to sleep in on a work trip is a rarity. We typically work late in to the evening then are back at it early the next day.
We didn’t start work until late afternoon on Saturday and I took full advantage. I got up around 8 AM to watch a live stream of my daughter’s figure skating competition in Nashville then went back to sleep until my son skated later in the afternoon.
We had moved hotels the previous night. We were no longer in the suburbs. We were know in the Central West End Neighborhood of St. Louis. That meant we had a few more options for meals and there were places we could walk to.
I found a couple of different places that sounded good but most of them would have required me to drive. I didn’t really feel like getting the car out of the parking garage then finding a spot where ever I was going so I just stuck with something I could walk to.
What I found was a Shake Shack.
St. Louis has two locations of Shake Shack in the city. One is in the Enterprise Center so I don’t really consider that a location. The other wasn’t far from my hotel in the Central West End.
Shake Shack’s St Louis location is on Euclid Avenue and West Pine Boulevard not too far from Barnes Jewish Hospital. The multi-story, multi-use building was built on this corner about ten years ago replacing a single story commercial building that was anchored by a dry cleaner. Shake Shake takes up the prominent bottom floor corner space and is accessible from either Euclid or Pine Boulevard.
Read more…Mama’s on the Hill
2132 Edwards StreetMy weekend got extended in St. Louis so I wasn’t able to meet my family in Nashville.
It worked out alright. J took the kids and another skater and they hung out with their friends most of the weekend. I’m sure they didn’t even miss me.
Our Friday in St. Louis was a little bit of a shorter day. We were done with work by about 5:30 and started heading to a new hotel closer to Barnes Jewish Hospital.
As we pulled out of the parking garage downtown, I asked co-worker if she wanted to get dinner. Earlier in the week, she had mentioned going to The Hill and finding a place. This was our chance to do that.
If you’ve never been to The Hill neighborhood in St. Louis, it’s wild. It’s really just a neighborhood with Italian restaurants and businesses sprinkled in amongst the houses. Parking is a nightmare. It’s all street parking and when there are cars on both sides of the street, it becomes very hard for two cars to pass each other going opposite directions.
I have only been to The Hill once and I couldn’t tell you what restaurant we ate at. It was before that very awful Rascal Flatts concert I told you about in my blog post about the Enterprise Center so it was quite a while ago.
When we checked in to our hotel Tuesday, the guy checking us in gave a couple of recommendations. I just took the one that sounded somewhat familiar to me and headed there.
Mama’s on the Hill is on the corner of Edwards Street and Bischoff Avenue in St. Louis’ The Hill Neighborhood. The restaurant is surrounded by houses and just kind of tucked in to the corner. The building has a long history as a restaurant. It was first opened as Oldani’s in 1939 then became Mamma Campisi’s in 1982. It closed in 2005 but was reopened by a new family in 2006 and became known as Mama’s on the Hill. The restaurant’s real claim to fame is the invention of toasted ravioli…a food that has become synonymous with St. Louis.
Read more…Waffle House (Maryland Heights)
12215 Dorsett Road When we planned out trip to Nashville, long before I knew I was going to St. Louis this weekend, one of the most exciting things outside of the skating the kids were going to do was that the hotel we booked had a Waffle House in the parking lot.
L has picked up on my love for Waffle House after she and J took a trip to Tampa last year for skating.
This was another thing that bummed me out when I realized I wasn’t going to Nashville with everyone else.
When my colleague and I got to St. Louis, Waffle House was brought up. I got curious. Are there Waffle Houses in St. Louis.
The answer was yes. Yes there are.
Thursday was our really long work day. We started around 11 AM and worked until about 11 PM.
When we got back in the car to head to the hotel I asked if she was hungry. She kind of gave me a non-answer until I said this was our chance to go to Waffle House. That non-answer changed to a “let’s go.”
We picked the Waffle House in Maryland Heights. The shop is on Old Dorsett Road right off Dorsett Road. It’s wedged into a space between Homewood Suites and a shopping plaza. It looks like any other Waffle House…a long skinny building, and the property is the same. Long and skinny with just enough room for the building and a parking lot.
Read more…Enterprise Center
1401 Clark Avenue- St. Louis, MO 63103
- (314) 622-5400
- Website
On one of our first dates back in 2007, J and I took a trip to St. Louis to see Rascal Flatts at what was then called the Scotttrade Center.
It was probably the worst concert I have ever been to in my life. The show was awful. Gary LeVox left the stage for like 45 minutes in the middle of the set and the other two guys played a guitar cover of Somewhere over the Rainbow that seems like it lasted an hour.
Fortunately, J didn’t hold it against me.
I don’t really remember anything about the arena. I just remember how bad the show was.
I was back in that arena this past week while we were in St. Louis. Western Michigan was playing in the Frozen Four.
The Enterprise Center is the home to the St. Louis Blues. It was built in the mid-90’s and originally opened as the Kiel Center named after former Mayor Henry Kiel. The building replaced Kiel Auditorium which was on that site at the corner of 14th and Clark in downtown St. Louis. The 18,000 seat arena hosts most of the major shows and events in the St. Louis area. There are parking lots all around the arena including a connected parking garage that is still named Kiel Center Parking garage. Over the years, the arena has been known as the Savvis Center, Scottrade Center and now the Enterprise Center who bought the naming rights in 2018.
Read more…Wally’s (Fenton)
950 Assembly Parkway- Fenton, MO 63026
- (636) 678-7087
- Website
Like I mentioned in my first post from this trip, I was supposed to be in Nashville this weekend.
We signed the kids up for a figure skating competition in Nashville and had been making plans ever since. J and I went to Nashville for one night on our honeymoon on our way back to Michigan from Pigeon Forge. That’s the only time we’ve been there.
One of the biggest thing the kids were looking forward to was stopping at Buc-ees. There’s one along the way in Smiths Grove, TN. B wanted so much stuff. A few of his friends have blankets, t-shirts, onesies, etc. He wanted those things too.
When my plans got changed and I was heading to St. Louis for the weekend. I was going to miss out on the Buc-ees stop. I’ve never been to one and I was looking forward to it too.
No worries though, there’s an equally ridiculous gas station stop along the way in Pontiac, IL.
I told my colleague we were going to stop at Wally’s. It was like Buc-ees but it’s not Buc-ees. I figured we’d grab lunch there on our way down. I’ve been there before. Two of my aunts are in a nursing home nearby and I stopped there last time I went to visit.
Our second night in St. Louis we headed back to the hotel after our shift was done. We stayed at Drury Plaza that in addition to free breakfast, has free dinner for guests. My colleague said she was tired and we’d see what hotel dinner was. It was pasta and chicken and it wasn’t bad so we just ate there and enjoyed a couple of free drinks that came with it.
I needed to go get gas in the car though before our next day in St. Louis. I realized we were really close to the other Wally’s and I had just enough gas to get there. So once we got done with hotel dinner, I headed to Fenton.
The other of the two Wally’s locations is on Assembly Parkway in Fenton, MO at N Highway Drive right off I-44. It’s really kind of confusing to get to if you’re not familiar with the location. I was coming from the east on I-44 and it had me get off the highway a mile before the store. N Highway Drive is one way heading west. If you get off at Bowles Avenue coming from the west, you’ll weave your way to Assembly Parkway and come in from that side of the travel plaza.
Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 