Road home from Chicago (Day 5)...

On the road again.... just can't wait to get on the road again...

This should totally be our theme song. We began our trek home on day 5 with a quick little trip to St. Louis for the night. We were dressed, packed and on the road by 8am!

Road trip pro tip: Pack food for meals. We brought enough for picnic lunches and tons of snacks which helped us stay on track for time and saved us tons of money. Our kids are super easy to please and major highways and interstates have awesome rest stops. We took advantage and made this part of our trip and it worked so well for us.

We rolled into St. Louis around 1:30pm to the most awesome sight... 

We didn't have anything planned for this day because I honestly wasn't sure how early we would actually leave. My favorite thing to do is really just ask the locals what the best places are to see and the hotel staff said, "You HAVE to take them to City Museum!!" Now, I had heard about the Magic House and really thought we would take them there but since the staff was so adamant, we switched our plans and I am SO SO SO glad we did. 

I'm pretty sure that this was the coolest place I've ever been [notice I didn't say the coolest "kids place" I've ever been - everyone has fun here.] I loved that the kids didn't feel like they had to go from exhibit to exhibit like at a traditional museum. City Museum is basically one giant indoor cave-like playground with slides and shoots and places to explore. One you make it all the way down into these hidden caves you can climb up ten stories to ride a slide back down. 

You can buy tickets to get roof access and ride a ferris wheel on top but we opted to skip that since we had just been at Navy Pier and they weren't sure if the ferris wheel was running at the moment. I can't even begin to do this place justice, y'all. Click here to watch a video and read all about the how and why - the whole thing is created from reclaimed materials - it's just amazing!

They have giant ball pits outside which sounds horrific in Texas but was perfect in St. Louis. They are set under these massive trees and the cool breeze made it the perfect setting for the kids to play. And bonus: they served beer. Beer. Beer at a "kids" place that clearly isn't just for kids. 

We stayed until they closed but the kids could have lasted much longer! Seriously, if you are near or around or passing through any where close to St. Louis - make this a planned stop! I'd suggest closed-toed shoes and pants or shorts (I was in a dress and not one to miss out on the fun, let's just say some people probably got a good show that day). (Sorry, Dad).

Next stop....

We clearly couldn't be in St. Louis without seeing the Arch - we did not take the tram up for a few reasons: 

1. The next available tickets were for 10pm

2. Radley's stomach had been queasy all day and well, that didn't sound fun

3. We had just been to the top of Sears/Willis Tower with a much cooler view

4. None of us really wanted to

(Is that awful?)

We made up for it by taking lots of pictures.

Lots and lots and lots of pictures.

Y'all. Don't you think my family would realize that by now I KNOW how to take a good picture. Well, they learned the hard way. I tried to explain that the further away from the arch we got, the easier it would be to get us AND the arch in the picture. 

Lessons learned.

(Confession: I was the one that forgot the selfie stick. SMH).

I mean, I would have gone even further.

We headed toward the hotel on search of dinner and lo and behold...

THE PERFECT PICTURE SPOT.

They weren't up for another selfie so I had to settle for these cute pics instead.

;)

We passed some carriage drivers and started talking to them and once again I asked where they recommended we eat dinner and without hesitation he said, "Bailey's Range."

Needless to say, we were all fans of that recommendation. In fact, we were all fans of St. Louis - so much so, that we decided to stay an extra night so we could enjoy the next day and not be so rushed to get through the zoo....