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Week 2: St. Louis, Gateway to the West
Wrapping up our trip to St. Louis
Whew! We have been busy exploring the last few days! We’ve visited some awesome places and had plenty of surprises.
Table of contents
- The Magic House Children’s Museum
- A Surprise Visit
- The St. Louis Aquarium
- The Gateway Arch
- The Great Forest Balloon Race
- A Not-so-Nice Surprise
- City Museum
- The St. Louis Zoo
- Wrapping Up Our St. Louis Stay
The Magic House Children’s Museum
We went to The Magic House Children’s Museum in St. Louis earlier last week. We used our ACM membership) to get 50% off our admission.
We have been to quite a few Children’s Museums and this was one of our favorites.
They had so many exhibits and even after being there for over 3 hours we still didn’t get to see everything! They had indoor and outdoor exhibits, there was something for everyone. From the village area where all my girls loved playing make believe, to the construction zone that Gideon enjoyed and even to the Electrostatic Generator that Eli enjoyed. Adeline’s favorite part was dressing up and dancing on the stage.
If you have kids 12 and under it is a definite must-stop in St. Louis!
A Surprise Visit
Friday of last week I got a phone call from a friend that I’ve known for most of my life asking if we would be home for them to come visit. I had to admit I thought he forgot that we were no longer in Pennsylvania when he asked. 😂 But they were making a trip from Michigan to Branson, Missouri and we were just a few miles off their route.
It was such a nice surprise to see familiar faces even the whole way out here in Missouri. Our oldest daughter has been the one to miss people the most and struggle the most with this decision and seeing friends we love was really good for her.
The St. Louis Aquarium
Friday afternoon we decided to check out Union Station and the St. Louis Aquarium. The Aquarium was smaller than some we have been to but it had more touch exhibits than we usually experience at an aquarium.
They had a place where you could put your hand in the water and the doctor fish would all nibble away at the dead skin on your hands. It was neat! It didn’t hurt but it definitely felt weird and there were so many of them that your entire hand was covered. You could also touch sea stars, sea snails, anemones, string rays, and moon jellyfish.
After finishing at the aquarium we went outside to sit and wait for the “Fire and Light” Show that is supposed to happen every hour from 12pm – 9pm at Union Station. It was 94 degrees with a real feel of 104 degrees so it was hot! Unfortunately, the show never happened and we didn’t stay much longer than the supposed start time because of the heat.
Union Station was a neat place to explore. They have many different restaurants, a ferris wheel, a ropes course, mini golf, and more! It definitely makes for a fun day trip.
The Gateway Arch
Saturday we went to the Gateway Arch National Park. We’ve been in St. Louis for over a week now and we are just now getting to see the iconic arch!
We’ve been able to see it from a distance between skyscrapers, but seeing it up close is something else entirely. At 630 feet high it is quite a feat of engineering.
Before we were able to go up into the arch itself we explored the underground museum at the base of the arch.
The National Parks Service has a “Junior Ranger” program that the kids were able to participate in. You can find them at most National Parks. We don’t have much experience with them yet since this was our first one. But it did provide a great way for some of the kids to be more interested in what the museum had to offer.
The park ranger gave our older 3 kids booklets that had various activities in them. All of them were tied to various parts of the museum, so they actually needed to read and observe the museum to fill it out (a homeschooling win!).
Our eldest lost interest in filling it out halfway through and the youngest two got bored of the museum. But, Gideon and Emalyn were able to complete enough of the booklet to get their Junior Ranger badge.
Once our timed ticket was ready, we were able to go up to the top of the arch. To get to the top you need to ride a tram up through the legs of the arch. These trams are very tiny and cramped and only hold 5 people at a time. It was a little scary for some of the kids, but they pushed past their nerves and got to the top.
At the top, you can see out the observation windows for miles. We had a great view of both the city of St. Louis and across the river into Illinois.
The Great Forest Balloon Race
On the way back from visiting the Gateway Arch we stopped alongside the road to see some hot air balloons “race”. The kids enjoyed seeing them launch and a few of them even went overhead!
This was really lucky timing on our part. We want to find some of the cool local events to join in during our adventure.
A Not-so-Nice Surprise
Brian and I woke up Sunday to the kids running into our room saying there was water leaking all over in the basement. It had rained really hard all night and water was leaking in through the walls of the basement.
It soaked the rug and leaked the whole way across the floor. We cleaned it all up and let the host know. He didn’t want to interrupt our stay so he said he would have a foundation person look at it after we left. So, I guess it’s our responsibility to clean up the mess, LOL.
There has been quite a bit of rain the last few days and we are supposed to get a lot of rain Friday and Saturday from hurricane Helene, so we will see what happens.
I will say that is the benefit of not owning a house, these aren’t our problems so we don’t have to deal with them. 😁
City Museum
Sunday was supposed to be another wet and rainy day so we decided to go check out the City Museum in St. Louis. This is not a museum in the traditional sense. This is one of the coolest places we have been and the kids loved it!
It is multiple floors of slides, climbing apparatus, caves, tunnels, and even a little aquarium section. The slides and climbing places can go from one floor to the next so if you have younger kids you definitely would want to follow along with them so they don’t end up on a different floor than you.
We did set a meeting place with the older kids in case we got separated and we wrote our phone numbers on the younger kids’ wristbands in case we got separated. But I’ll be honest I’m a little bit of a helicopter parent so we never got separated. 😂
I will warn you though, some of the tunnels and spaces are small! Brian attempted to follow the kids into a tunnel that was supposed to come out into a small maze. However, it was a dead end and he might have gotten stuck. 😉 I was a little worried we were going to be calling the fire department. 😂
You could spend hours or even days here exploring different rooms and different paths. There was an outside section that we didn’t get to and a whole rooftop experience that we want to try out next time we go. It definitely seems like people either love or hate this place, but we loved it!
The St. Louis Zoo
We went to the St. Louis Zoo yesterday and it was one of our favorites! The best part is that it is free!!
You do have to pay for some extras like the 4D theater and the train, but for being a free zoo it was really cool! The train acts like a tram so if you get a ticket you can ride it all day and travel between the different sections of the zoo.
The zoo itself is pretty spread out so the train was nice. We also got to see an elephant doing tricks when we went by on the train which was so cool!
We got splashed by a penguin, got to see a hippo up really close, and saw a baby orangutan and a baby chimp! They had a great variety of animals.
Plus if you are a coffee drinker there was a Starbucks right in the middle. 😉 Definitely a must-do if you are in the area.
After coming to the end of our adventure here in St. Louis I can confidently say we 100% recommend this area for a vacation! There is just so much to do and some free things too which is great for your budget.
Wrapping Up Our St. Louis Stay
We had plans to go to a Fall Festival at a Pumpkin Patch but we got rained out. That’s a bummer but we were able to move around Brian’s work schedule so we could go to the zoo during the week instead of Saturday when it is supposed to rain (again). We are so grateful for the flexibility that Brian’s company allows. It gives us so many opportunities!
We only have a few more days left in St. Louis before we move on to destination number 2. As I have taken some time to reflect over the last almost 2 weeks since we left I am just grateful for this opportunity.
Sure, there are days when I am extremely stressed. It takes some adjustment to get used to living in a smaller space, living out of buckets and suitcases, and trying to cook in a kitchen that isn’t fully stocked and might not even have oven mitts!
But I think as we continue this adventure we will find our rhythm. We will continue to explore and grow together and find ways to make those little things less stressful.
