Summer 2011 Road Trip - the rest of the trip

Ok, so my idea of posting every night went down in flames when we started doing evening activities which we got us back to the hotel at 11:00 p.m. or later and then we were to meet the rest of the family for the next day’s activities at 8:30 a.m. We ended up being really tired but we had a great time in St. Louis!

Monday

On Monday we headed down to St Louis with Dave’s extended family - 12 people in all. We got a bit of a late start (getting 12 people packed, organized and ready to go is quite a feat) so it was decided to have a lazy afternoon at the hotel. Since we had some down time, Dave and I decided to venture out alone to eat at White Castle. Neither of us had ever been before and we were anxious to see how the burgers tasted. The verdict? They were pretty good, but not something that we would crave all of the time.

Later that night everyone took a trip to the arch - a St. Louis must do activity. We paid our $10 to take the ‘pods’ to the top and look out of the windows. We think it was more fun to do at night because we got fun pictures of the city with all of the lights.

 

Tuesday

On Tuesday we went to the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis. Practically the entire inside is covered in mosaic. We were able to take the tour and were given the explanations and meanings behind man of the pieces of art inside. It was a really interesting and beautiful place.

After the cathedral we headed to the St. Louis Science Center to look around. We had a lot of fun looking at all of the exhibits at the center, but our favorite thing was the Life Science Lab where we got to dress up in lab coats and goggles and do science experiments. Dave and I had a lot of fun extracting wheat DNA and solving a crime using fingerprint patterns!

That evening we went to a Cardinals baseball game at Busch Stadium. The humidity was so high that we were sweating just sitting in our seats! EW!! We still had a good time even though the Cardinals lost the game… and it was an embarrassing loss.

Wednesday

We spent most of the day on Wednesday at the St. Louis Zoo. Our favorite parts were the Penguin exhibit where you were so close to the penguins and puffins that you could almost touch them (and it was super cold in the exhibit - a welcome break from the heat and humidity) and the sting ray exhibit where we got to touch sting rays and sharks.

 

In the afternoon we all took a trip the the Anheiser-Busch Brewery where we took a tour and got to sample beer for free. And in the evening we went to see Legally Blonde, the musical, at the Muny which is an outdoor theatre. Even when it started to rain a little bit the show went on. It was another fun day!

Thursday and Friday

We had a great trip but it was time to head home. We stopped over in Nebraska on Thursday night to visit our friends Laura & Kyle who we haven’t seen since their wedding last year. It was so nice to be able to catch up in person!

We picked up Gromit from my parents’ house on Friday and headed home. We had a great trip, made some great memories, visited with many of the people we love, but it is so nice to be home.

Here’s to our 2011 road trip!