Good Morning!

This week has a little bit of everything and a suspicious number of reasons to end up in Cottleville.

There is a two-day grand opening in Wentzville, Taylor Swift Night at Frankie Martin's, a full parish picnic, country music at Cottle Village, an O'Fallon summer sale, a wellness walk, a truck pull, and a class where you can build a tiny bookshelf for tiny books.

Which is good news for anyone whose weekend plans were still just "probably leave the house at some point."

There is also a park near De Soto where some of Missouri's oldest stories are carved directly into the rock.

Here's what's happening this week. 👇

Village Closet Volunteer Morning
📍 Village Closet, 119 W. Pearce Blvd., Wentzville
⏰ 9–11:30 AM

It Takes A Village is looking for volunteers to sort clothes, organize donations, and help make the Village Closet more welcoming for the families it serves. Stay for the whole morning or stop in for whatever time you can give, because this is one of those jobs where an extra set of hands actually changes the room.

Taylor Swift Night at Frankie Martin's Garden
📍 Frankie Martin's Garden, 5372 St. Charles St., Cottleville
⏰ Starts at 5 PM; trivia at 7 PM

Frankie Martin's is inviting Swifties from every era for Taylor-themed drinks, local vendors, friendship bracelets, outfits, sing-alongs, and free all-ages trivia at the Beer Barn. This is your official permission to wear glitter on a Thursday and call it a schedule.

St. Joseph Cottleville Parish Picnic
📍 St. Joseph Cottleville, 1355 Motherhead Road, Cottleville
⏰ 5–11 PM

The parish picnic opens Friday with rides, games, food, monster margaritas, snow cones, kabobs, and Zero to Ninety on the main stage. It is the classic church-picnic formula, which is basically a small festival where someone you know is always carrying raffle tickets.

Almost Famous at Cottle Village
📍 Cottle Village, Cottleville
⏰ 7–10 PM

Almost Famous is bringing Top 40 hits from the '80s, '90s, and 2000s to Cottle Village. Grab a drink from The Tavern or Farmstead Distillery, find a spot outside, and prepare to discover which songs your brain has been quietly storing for thirty years.

The RetroNerds Live at Brewskeez
📍 Brewskeez Smokehouse & Music, O'Fallon
⏰ 7–11 PM

The RetroNerds return to Brewskeez for four hours of '80s dance music. This is for anyone who wants barbecue, a Friday night out, and a room full of people collectively remembering that synthesizers solved a lot of problems.

July Wellness Meetup
📍 Quail Ridge Park, 24 Columbine Lane meeting point, Wentzville
⏰ Meet at 9 AM; walk begins at 9:30 AM

STL Wellness Collective is hosting a beginner-friendly three-mile loop through Quail Ridge Park using paved, grass, and gravel paths. Come alone or bring a friend; the only real requirement is being awake and willing to walk before the day gets ideas.

Recharge Wentzville Grand Opening
📍 Recharge Health & Wellness, 15372 Veterans Memorial Parkway, Wentzville
⏰ Saturday 10 AM–6 PM and Sunday 10 AM–3 PM

Recharge Health & Wellness is celebrating its Wentzville grand opening across two days. The event page keeps the plan simple: stop by the new location, meet the team, and help officially welcome another business to Veterans Memorial Parkway.

Summer Sale Event
📍 Apricot Lane Boutique, 3028 WingHaven Blvd., O'Fallon
⏰ 10 AM–7 PM

Apricot Lane's summer sale includes permanent jewelry from Links & Chains, a hat bar with Golden Girl Hat Co., mimosas, Infinity Sweets cookies, Soul Nutrition outside, surprises, and swag bags with purchase while supplies last. "I was only going to look" remains available as a strategy, although the event has prepared several counterarguments.

St. Joseph Cottleville Parish Picnic
📍 St. Joseph Cottleville, 1355 Motherhead Road, Cottleville
⏰ 11 AM–11 PM

Saturday's picnic schedule includes rides and games starting at 11, a cornhole tournament at noon, parish band and jazz band performances, Irish dance, balloon creations, face painting, and The RetroNerds on the main stage at 8 PM. It is a full eleven-hour answer to "what should we do today?"

UFP Wellness + Shopping Expo
📍 Ultimate Fitness Plus, 425 S. Lincoln Drive, Troy
⏰ 11 AM–2 PM

Ultimate Fitness Plus is hosting local wellness businesses, boutiques, sweet treats, and a basket raffle supporting a mission trip to Camp Crossway. Bring five requested food-pantry items for one raffle entry, which is a very efficient way to shop local, give back, and possibly leave with a prize basket.

Drawl at Cottle Village
📍 Cottle Village, Cottleville
⏰ 6:30–10:30 PM

Drawl is bringing what it calls "Country Done Rowdy" to Cottle Village for a four-hour Saturday night show. More than 650 people were interested on Facebook, so the quiet-evening portion of Cottleville's weekend appears to have been canceled.

Clover at Frankie Martin's Garden
📍 Frankie Martin's Garden, Cottleville
⏰ 7–11 PM

Clover is bringing its high-energy country-rock mix to Frankie Martin's with banjo, fiddle, electric guitar, drums, bass, country favorites, and a few rock-and-roll curveballs. In other words, Saturday in Cottleville has options, but "somewhere very quiet" is not one of them.

Lincoln County Fair Parade
📍 Troy
⏰ 5 PM

The Lincoln County Fair gets its week rolling with the annual parade through Troy. The fair itself runs July 14–18 at the Lincoln County Fairgrounds, so think of Sunday as the opening act before the livestock, concerts, games, and truck pulls arrive.

Tribe Community Impact Night
📍 Pizza Ranch, 1225 Wentzville Parkway, Wentzville
⏰ 5–8 PM

Wentzville Tribe Basketball is hosting a fundraiser night at Pizza Ranch, with a percentage of sales and cash tips supporting the program. Takeout and delivery count too, and the Tribe family that brings the most paying guests can win a $150 gift card, so this fundraiser has introduced a competitive division for eating pizza.

Touch-A-Truck Event
📍 Pizza Ranch, 4732 Mid Rivers Mall Drive, Cottleville
⏰ 4–7 PM

Pizza Ranch is filling the parking lot with police cars, construction vehicles, tractors, and other machines kids can see, climb into, and explore. It is the rare dinner plan where asking a child to leave the parking lot may be the hardest part.

July Porch Mat Class at Frankie Martin's Garden
📍 Frankie Martin's Garden, 5372 St. Charles St., Cottleville
⏰ 6 PM

This hands-on class includes materials, step-by-step instruction, eight summer designs, and a finished custom porch mat to take home. Tickets are $40 and nonrefundable, so choose the design carefully; your front door is about to have a seasonal opinion.

Live Reptile Display at the Log Cabin
📍 Legacy Park Log Cabin, 5490 Fifth St., Cottleville
⏰ 5–7 PM

The City of Cottleville is bringing live reptiles to the Legacy Park Log Cabin, with Kona Ice joining the evening too. This is either an excellent educational outing or a very specific test of which family member stands farthest from the snake.

Garden Party — Jammin' Concert Series
📍 Civic Park, 402 Civic Park Drive, O'Fallon
⏰ 6:30–9 PM

Garden Party is playing oldies at O'Fallon's free Jammin' Concert Series. Food and treats are expected from Dynasty Manna, Jr's Tacos, Lulu's Shaved Ice and Creamery, Beverly Ann's Cookie Truck, and the city concession stand; outside food and drinks are also allowed as long as there is no glass.

Wolfpack Carwash — A Wash So Good, You'll Howl
📍 Wentzville South Middle School, 561 E. Highway N, Wentzville
⏰ 4–7 PM

Timberland football players are trading helmets for sponges to raise money for uniforms, equipment, and team meals. The wash is donation-based and includes music, team spirit, Kona Ice, and a chance to remove what the event page accurately calls "road seasoning."

Make Your Own Mini-Bookshelf
📍 Double Dog Bookshop, 505 E. Allen St., Wentzville
⏰ 6–8 PM

Double Dog Bookshop is hosting a class where you paint a miniature bookshelf, choose up to 30 tiny books from more than 1,000 options, and add small decorations like plants, potions, coffee, picture frames, or a crystal ball. It is an entire home library with none of the usual concerns about floor space.

EMTP Truck and Tractor Pull
📍 Lincoln County Fairgrounds, 1 Fairgrounds Road, Troy
⏰ Pull starts at 6:30 PM

Eastern Missouri Truck Pullers is bringing gas and diesel truck classes plus classic modified tractors to the Lincoln County Fair. Tech runs from 3–5 PM, registration from 3:30–5:30 PM, and the drivers' meeting is at 6, which is a lot of preparation for an evening built around seeing what can pull what.

America 250 Concert Series – Breakdown Shakedown
📍 Wentzville Community Club, 500 W. Main St., Wentzville
⏰ Saturday, July 18 at 6:30 PM

Wentzville's free America 250 Concert Series continues with Breakdown Shakedown playing today's hits and crowd-favorite classics. There will also be food trucks and kids' entertainment, and the city recommends bringing blankets and lawn chairs. More than 700 people are already interested on Facebook, so Historic Downtown may be operating at full lawn-chair capacity.

St. Theodore Summer Picnic
📍 St. Theodore Catholic Church, 2050 Grothe Road, Wentzville
⏰ Sunday, July 19, 11 AM–7 PM

St. Theodore's summer picnic has free admission, live music beginning with Hayden Scorfina at noon, family games, food, homemade desserts, adult beverages, a Bubble Bus from 1–4 PM, and a new climbing wall with a $15 all-you-can-climb option. The dinner menu includes fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn, green beans, coleslaw, and dessert, which is a fairly convincing argument for not making dinner at home that Sunday.

This one is a little farther away.

But it is also the kind of place that makes the drive home involve at least one person saying, "How did we not know that was there?"

Washington State Park, near De Soto, has river bluffs, hiking trails, cabins, camping, a swimming pool, and some of the most impressive stonework in Missouri's park system.

All of that would be enough for a perfectly good day trip.

But the thing that makes this park different is much older than the park itself.

Carved into exposed rock are images left by American Indian people connected to the culture archaeologists call Mississippian.

They are believed to date to around A.D. 1000.

Which means these carvings were already old before anyone was arguing about where Wentzville technically ends and Foristell begins.

The park contains the largest group of petroglyphs discovered in Missouri.

There are two public viewing sites.

The main site is near the park's north entrance, where a short, level paved path leads to a covered shelter and observation deck.

You do not walk on the carvings or wander between them.

You look from the designated deck, read the interpretive panels, and give the site the respect that comes with standing near something culturally significant that has survived for roughly a thousand years.

The second, smaller petroglyph site is beside the interpretive center and also has a viewing deck.

Both are open year-round during park hours.

And during the summer, park interpreters usually offer guided petroglyph tours on Saturdays at 2 PM.

That alone is worth building a trip around.

But there is another layer to the park once you start looking at the buildings.

In the 1930s, an African American Civilian Conservation Corps company known as Company 1743 helped develop Washington State Park.

They built Thunderbird Lodge, an octagonal overlook shelter, roads, trails, and other structures from local stone.

Their work was so carefully done that it earned special recognition when the park's historic resources were added to the National Register of Historic Places.

You can still see that craftsmanship throughout the park.

Thunderbird Lodge has hand-forged ironwork and a thunderbird carved into its stone chimney.

The 1,000 Steps Trail uses stone laid by the CCC and climbs through the hills toward an overlook above the Big River.

Whatever the exact number of steps, the name has already made its intentions clear.

There are three marked hiking trails in the park.

The Opossum Track Trail follows bluffs above the river.

Rockywood Trail is the more rugged option.

Or you can keep the outing simple.

See the petroglyphs.

Stop at the overlook.

Walk through the old stone lodge.

Find a picnic table.

Let the person who packed snacks receive the praise they deserve.

The park also offers fishing and floating on the Big River, a natural gravel-bar swimming area, a seasonal swimming pool with a waterslide, campsites, and cabins if you want to turn the drive into an overnight trip.

But you do not need to do all of that.

The petroglyph sites are the rare attraction that can be the main reason for a trip without requiring the entire day.

They are old.

Close enough for a day trip.

Easy to view.

And completely different from the normal "let's find somewhere to walk around" park outing.

The park and petroglyph viewing sites are open daily from 7 AM to sunset.

📍 13041 State Highway 104, De Soto

If you make the drive, give yourself enough time to see the carvings and at least some of the CCC stonework.

One tells a story that has been sitting in the rock for roughly a thousand years.

The other has been standing for nearly a century.

And both make the park feel like much more than a place to stop and stretch your legs.

That’s what I’ve got for you this week.

If you know of a local event, fundraiser, hidden gem, business update, or something people around Wentzville should know about, send it my way and I’ll do my best to include it in an upcoming issue.

As always, thanks for reading, sharing, and helping make Wentzville a great place to live.

See you next Thursday,
Skyler