St. Louis - Day 1

In the past we have always stayed home when the kids have spring break.  But now that we are in "real" school (not preschool), we try not to miss any school for vacations and need to take advantage of the time the kids have off.  And Brian has been working non-stop lately and the only way he'll take a break is if we get out of town.

So this year we decided to go to St. Louis for spring break.  St. Louis is only about 5 hours away which is nothing compared to our usual 10-12 hour drives to Florida or North Carolina.  We left early on Tuesday morning and drove back Friday night.  It was a GREAT trip!  We fit in a lot while still not feeling over-scheduled.

On Tuesday, we left our house around 7am.  The drive was easy and even Gray did pretty well.  We stopped around noon just before crossing the river into St. Louis in East St. Louis for an easy lunch at Chick-fil-a (we haven't been there in forever and the kids were stoked!).

We stayed at the Hampton Inn Downtown and were able to check in early so we went ahead and unpacked the car and left it there for the day.  Then we headed out on foot towards the Gateway Arch.

  

The grounds around the Arch and the tram rides to the top have been closed due to construction for awhile.  But we planned on visiting the Old Courthouse which is the current visitor's center for the Arch.

The Old Courthouse was the site of the first two trials of the Dred Scott case in 1847 and 1850.  Because it is part of the National Park system, I thought it would be fun for the kids to finally do one of the Junior Ranger Programs.  Carter and Rylan had a huge worksheet to fill out about the architecture and exhibits in the courthouse.  

As we were going through courthouse and answering questions, Brian noticed that it looked like tickets were being sold for something.  Surprise, surprise - the tram rides to the top of the Arch had just started back up that day!!!  We decided to take a break from the courthouse and get tickets.  I'm so glad we did because when we had finished, a lot more people were figuring out that the Arch was back open and the lines were much longer!

As were waited our turn to take the tram, we listened to a tour guide tell us lots of information about the Arch.  The boys did a great job being patient and paying attention :)

It was finally time for our ride!

Each "pod" has 5 seats so we got one to ourselves.  We had plenty of room but I'm sure these would be tight for five larger adults!!!

Gray did fine but he was not a huge fan.  He held on tight to me!  It was only a few months ago that he'd scream whenever we got into a normal elevator.

The views from the top were great, of course.  We enjoyed finding things like our hotel and the baseball stadium.

The river side view ...

The Old Courthouse ...

St. Louis Cardinals Stadium ...

Our hotel is the one on the far right next to the Edward Jones Dome ...

The construction going on below the Arch ...

It was super windy on Tuesday - I think about 20 mph winds with higher gusts.  And you could definitely feel the Arch swaying when at the top.  It didn't make me nervous at but Brian had to keep an eye out a window so he didn't get motion sick :)

All the boys ...

Someone offered to take our picture.  It turned out blurry but I'll still share it :)

After our tram ride down the Arch, we headed back over to the Old Courthouse.  Proof that it was really windy ... look at that hair on both boys!!!

Carter and Rylan finished up their worksheets in the courthouse and got their first junior ranger badges.  Gray got one too (it is special one with a hook on the back instead of a pin!).

Next we walked a few blocks over to the City Garden.

There are a bunch of fun sculptures throughout the two block garden.  The kids were allowed to climb on some of the sculptures and they enjoyed running around for awhile.

After playing for awhile, we walked over to Bailey's Range for dinner.  It's a local burger and shake place with AMAZING food.

So yummy!!!

After dinner our little city explorers walked with us back to our hotel.  The Hampton Inn had an indoor pool so we joined the rest of the people at the hotel in the very crowded pool.  The boys didn't seem to notice and loved it (including Gray).  All the unsupervised crazy kids drove Brian and I a little nuts but we survived :)

We had a standard two queen bed room and tried to spend as little time in there as possible on our trip.  Brian and I had a bed, Carter had a bed, Rylan slept on his inflatable mattress with the sides, and Gray slept in his playyard.  The room was fine but that's a lot of people in a small space :)