It’s been a while since we made a blog post! From Voyaguers National Park we traveled to Iowa, Wisconsin, and Chicago to visit with several of Andrew’s family. We made a day trip from Chicago to Indiana Dunes National Park. I took about 2 pictures because it was just a really nice beach day and we were having fun playing in the water. Since we have mainly been in cities, we’ve been doing a lot more urban activities like visiting children’s museums, science museums, playing in pools and going to a waterpark. We did randomly run into friends of ours, Sam and Mark, at Minnesota Children’s Museum which was so wild. It had been several years since we saw them and running into them in a place neither of us currently live was just a total coincidence.
We decided to make the trip to St Louis from Chicago vs waiting until later on in our trip because of the proximity to Chicago. We stayed at an RV park just outside St Louis but had easy access to the city for 4 nights. I asked for recommendations on what to do and see with kids in one of my fb groups ahead of time and everyone recommended Grant’s Farm, the Zoo, City Museum, Science Center, and of course Gateway Arch which was our main reason for coming because it’s a National Park.
We didn’t book any attraction tickets until we got into town in order to stay flexible with arrival dates. This meant we weren’t able to go up in the Arch the first day. So we had that day free. We chose Grant’s Farm! We knew nothing about this place, only that it was highly recommended. On their website I learned I needed to reserve parking, so I did, where I also learned it’s run by Anheuser Busch… and then in the FAQ I also learned that everyone 21+ gets 2 free beers! Score! This place is basically a mini-zoo. They have several different exotic animals plus a 15 minute animal show. There are different paid encounters as well. My favorite part was getting to see the Clydesdales though.
The next day we reserved a spot at the zoo (which is free entry but you have to make advanced reservation due to covid). The kids loved the penguin exhibit. We also loved that there were several indoor habitats that we could go inside to get out of the heat.
In the afternoon we went to the Science Center (which I only took about 2 pictures of because we were having a ton of fun). There was a video game exhibit that Ben begged to go back to a second time. The kids also loved the Arch building out of the foam blocks and got both me and Andrew involved. Our Arch wasn’t totally weight bearing but it was pretty close.
On day 3 we went to City Museum in the morning and Gateway Arch National Park in the afternoon.
I learned about City Museum several years ago when I was researching how to make my own slide, and someone from City Museum had answered whatever wikihow I had stumbled across about making your own slide from found materials and metal. I researched a bit more and found out this sounded like a pretty awesome place. It exceeded all my expectations in person. It is a bit overload to the senses at first. It is definitely not meant for unfit people. We were climbing and scooting all over the place to keep up with the kids. It was a magical and beautiful place though. Every single surface is covered in mosaic to match the theme of the room. Everything is climbable. There are slides *everywhere*. I loved it. We climbed around the outside Monstro-city in the morning thank goodness because lightning storms shut it down around noon. If you’re ever in St Louis I highly recommend a visit, especially with kids. Small kids younger than 5 or 6 probably would not have as much fun. Our 5 and 7 yr old had a blast. Many of the slides have height limits but it didn’t slow us down much and the toddler town was the perfect size for the under 5 crowd but our 5 yr old only wanted to spend 1/2 hour there.
We got to the Gateway Arch National Park about 45 minutes before our scheduled ticket time for the elevator ride. This was probably a little too much time for hyper kids in the museum at the end of the long day. Once we finally got into the elevator pod and up to the top the kids loved everything about it and didn’t want to leave. The museum was very educational and included history from various eras including indigenous peoples, colonial, and then the building of the Arch. I was concerned it would be similar to Mt Rushmore and just be a memorial to the builder. I was pleasantly surprised it was not.
We loved our time in St Louis. It was a really fun city with tons to do and we barely scratched the surface.
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