My husband Jack loves beans of every kind, well except for Lima beans, which I love!  When we are on the road in our Monaco Vesta motor home I will cook a pot of beans about every week and bake New Mexican cornbread to go with them.

One week we were traveling through Missouri and decided to make a stop to see the St. Louis Botanical Gardens. One of our guide books gave it a high recommendation.  We lucked out and got a space at the St. Louis RV Park for two nights.  It’s the only RV park in the downtown area and we were so happy to have found an opening.

I put on a pot of Jack’s favorites - black beans and sausage over low heat as we sat down for a quick lunch.  After we had eaten, we jumped in the old Jeep we tow and headed out for the gardens.

It was a perfect early summer day and the Botanical Gardens were some of the most beautiful we had ever seen!  We especially enjoyed the Japanese Gardens and feeding the fish at the Koi pond.  We stayed a lot longer than we had planned on and still didn’t get to see all that we wanted to.

When we drove up to the motor home I looked at the big front window and all I could see was white.  All of the other windows were white too like they were frosted glass.  I was puzzled until we opened the door.  The smoke and smell of burned beans was awful!  I had forgotten to turn the beans off!  Thank goodness it didn’t start a fire.

It was one of hardest things I've ever had to clean up and the motor home smelled like burnt beans for weeks!  I cleaned the surface of everything a couple of times, washed the bedding and all of our clothes, steam cleaned the furniture and used a dozen Glade air fresheners before finally getting out the stink!

We haven’t had the desire to eat beans for a while.  But we will go back to the Botanical Gardens again!

Betty and Jack Meyers, Alamogordo