Road Trip!

Grammy and Papa (as well as the other relatives) left mid-week, so we planned to take a weekend road trip to St. Louis, somewhere Madelyn and I have never been! YIPPEE! Auntie Kim, Ethan, Madelyn, and I packed our duffle bags and jumped in the car! We had plenty of snacks and things to do so the four-hour drive didn’t seem too bad. Although Kim was doing all the driving so she might disagree. ;)

Auntie Kim’s friend Jennifer (who she met when she was in school learning how to be a fabulous flight attendant) welcomed us into her beautiful home, so we had a “base” where we could crash for a few nights after doing some sight-seeing.

We started off with The Arch. That seemed like the most obvious choice. I mean, you can’t go to St. Louis and not visit The Arch. It’s just not allowed. This was a remarkable experience, one that I know we will remember always.

We parked at the City Museum (so we could visit later) and walked to the courthouse to buy our tickets.

Once we got our tickets, we headed to the Arch!

The ride to the top of the arch was very interesting. We rode in a pod-type car which rocked back and forth all the way to the top.

Once at the top, we had some incredible views!

Then we headed back down to the bottom...

After going to the top of the Arch, we walked to the City Museum which was absolutely amazing. Hmm… Amazing doesn’t quite describe it, but gosh, we’ll go with that. The City Museum was built in an old shoe factory, and had several storied of pure run-around-and-climb-and-explore fun! We started off on the rooftop (in fear that a rain storm was near and they might close the roof. If we didn’t go anywhere but the roof, our visit to the museum would have been completed. It was that ridiculously wonderful! If I said there was a Ferris wheel on the top of the roof, would you get my drift? Well, there was a Ferris wheel at the top of the roof! Along with ropes and wires all leading to airplanes and school buses, and giant a giant praying mantis!

View from the Ferris Wheel

Anyone remember this guy?

It took Madelyn a while to get into her groove. She was feeling kind of uncertain about all the climbing, but as soon as we convinced her to try a few things, she was in (well, all expect the caves – she didn’t want anything to do with those)!

Madelyn insisted that I go with her on a lot of her explorations up and down the ropes and wire. Up and down. And up some more. There were a few times that I had to just sit and take a break. This was the downfall of City Museum. It was a reminder of how old I am, or at least how old my muscles and joints feel. Sheesh!

Ethan even convinced me to go down one of the slides that was an old chute from the shoe factory. I wasn’t really sure because it dropped straight down. He assured me it was not scary. And he was right. The slide was fun. CRAWLING through a tunnel on my hands and knees to get out into the open wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, but I managed. SLOWLY (very slowly), but surely. Thankfully there are no pictures to post of this because they would definitely not be pretty. I shudder to even think about it.

One of my favorite things to watch and do were these special “chairs” that you could sit in and use the weight of your body to go in circles. Pure joy, I say. Watch a cute video of Madelyn as she gets the hang of it:

Kim will have some words for me when she sees that I posted this picture, but I swear it makes me smile so big. I told her it should be her new profile picture on facebook. What do you think?