Travel and Tidbits

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Our Next Trip - any suggestions?

I received a great phone call this week. My sister-in-law is going to a convention in Wisconsin in October and she asked if we'd like to come along! So, we'll be going on another trip. Yeah!

We'll be flying to Kansas City and then driving up. We have several days to get to Wisconsin and several days to get home so we'll be making several stops. Right now our plans are to stop in Hannibal, MO and to spend some time in Wisconsin including Door County. We might stop by Chicago which we LOVED last fall, or we might just try some new spots.

All together, we'll probably be driving through portions of Kansas, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Missouri. If you've got any great ideas for places to visit, particularly for Wisconsin (near Green Bay, Milwaukee, Madison, and Door County) and/or Iowa (we'll drive through Iowa City, Des Moines, Dubuque & Cedar Rapids), please let me know! Or, we could drive back through Illinois and hit cities like Peoria and Springfield. Thanks for your help!

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Day 6: Last Day in St. Louis

Our last day in St. Louis started with the earthquake. After getting packing the car, we stopped at the World Bird Sanctuary since the museum Alexandra wanted to go to didn't open until noon.

We enjoyed looking at raptors, but it started raining so we decided to go eat lunch while we waited for the museum to open.

We showed up at The Magic House just after noon. This is a neat children's museum with lots of hands on activities. We had a lot of fun playing with the above nail wall. We were making prints of our hands, faces, etc. I love how the above photo shows Alexandra's ponytail!

In the adds for the museum, they show a boy touching this electricity ball and Alexandra was anxious to give it a try. I didn't think her hair would work since it is so long, but it looks neat! I even paid a few dollars for them to take a photo and make a magnet for the fridge.

Alexandra's 2 favorite rooms were the library (where she played librarian) and the bank (where you could open a safe and use an ATM). I loved how they library talked about the Dewey Decimal system and had little mouse models about the various numbers. This one shows that the 400's are for "language."

Our last planned stop for the day was Meramec Caverns, and then we planned on heading to Oklahoma to spend a few days with family. The walking tour was a little over an hour and was a beautiful place I remember going to as a child.

Then, our unscheduled stop a few hours later... the ER... and then my new home for the next week, a hospital room. This was definitely a vacation week... I mean 2 weeks... we'll always remember. And, we're so glad to be home. :-)

Day 5: Paddle Boats

We ended up day 5 of our St. Louis vacation at the Boathouse which is near the zoo. There is a restaurant there, but there was a 2 hour wait. So, we elected just to take a paddle boat out for an hour. It was a beautiful evening and we had a lot of fun.

Of course, I enjoyed getting close to the ducks. We saw some more wood ducks! They're so beautiful.

There was a larger area to boat in - we chose to go around a decent-sized island. On the island, we saw more ducks and red-winged blackbirds. As we headed back to shore, we were shocked at how strongly the winds were blowing against us and it was HARD work to get back to shore.

Alexandra started out in back, but then she gladly took a turn paddling. It's nice that she's tall enough to help!

That night, we went out to eat in the restaurant that is connected to our hotel. Afterwards, I just stepped outside and took some photos of the arch lit up. From our hotel room, you could see about 1/3rd of the arch and Alexandra enjoyed sitting in the window just looking at the arch.

I just forgot to post this photo the other day. We went to several neat restaurants, but this was our favorite. In about 6-8 tables, there were board games set into the table. We let Alexandra choose and she picked the Clue table. We ate, then played a full game, and then had dessert. It was a great 2 hours of food & fun.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Day 5: St. Louis Zoo

After Turtle Park, we had just a short drive to the wonderful St. Louis Zoo. It's a FREE zoo, but you do have to pay for "extras" like the train ride and the carousel.

Our first stop was the train. We waited about 45 minutes! They were having a problem with one of their trains and we think they just weren't prepared for a lot of school groups or something. But, it was a beautiful day and we enjoyed talking to our "neighbors." And, the train ride was great. We did the whole "loop" and then had lunch.

One of my favorite areas was the Insectarium. There were so many neat insects to see here. And, my favorite tank included 2 neat insects - the one pictured above is a male ferocious water bug. The sign said "The largest of the true bugs is large enough to eat tadpoles and salamanders! This bug crawls on stream bottoms and also rises to the surface, where it sticks out breathing tubes for air. Females cement their eggs to the male (see photo - this male has LOTS of eggs "cemented" to him), who carries them until they hatch."

My other favorite insect was also in this tank, but the photos didn't turn out as he/she as under water. It was a Sunburst Diving Beetle. It swim around with a little bubble they've collected from the surface. And, just the way they swim is so cute!

This area also has the a butterfly wing in a geodesic dome. We have a butterfly dome here, too, but this one had butterflies EVERYWHERE! And, we even saw this Atlas Moth on a tree where it had just emerged. I love his big, fuzzy antenae.

This turkey was running around loose in the Children's area. He was so tame - you could just walk up and pet him.

My other favorite place in the zoo was the penguin and puffin house. The above penguin is a humbolt penguin which live off the coast of Peru and Chile where it gets pretty warm. These penguins were housed outside.

This cutie is a Tufted Puffin.

I loved the giraffes long, blue tongue.

And, Alexandra really enjoyed the prairie dogs. In fact, they have a Build-a-Bear at the zoo which is the only zoo Build-a-Bear in the world. They sell animals there that they don't sell anywhere else. Alexandra got a prairie dog, which she named Madison, as a souvenir.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Day 5: Turtle Park

On Day 5 of our vacation, we started at Turtle Park. This is a park alongside the highway that has giant turtle sculptures that just "beg" to be climbed on.

Looks like Alexandra is riding this giant turtle that might eat her Nana.

Yep, that's me with Alexandra!

Alexandra enjoyed sliding/scooting down this large turtle.

Nana & Alexandra are hatching from the turtle eggs! I thought it was funny that there is a large snake sculpture wrapped around these turtle eggs. (You can see part of it in the foreground of the photo.)

Day 4: 7 1/2 hours at City Museum

Most of day 4 in St. Louis was spent at City Museum. We were there for 7.25 hours, including lunch! Alexandra LOVED this place. It was her favorite stop during our vacation.

City Museum is a climbing place and the floors are covered with mosaics

Different areas, both inside and out, had different themes. This was the underwater room.

There were crazy tubes to climb through - most adults would not be able to get through these

The photo doesn't do this scary tunnel justice. You dropped down in this dark hole which led to a tunnel under the floor. A lot of kids were too scared to do this. It took Alexandra a few tries, but then she LOVED it and went lots of times. I was shocked that some adults went through this - maybe it is bigger than I thought, but "no, thanks!"

Outside was incredible. 5 STORIES of things to climb on.

Alexandra climbed all over this place. I was scared to...

...but I finally joined her for the last hour. That's us up on the "bridge." This was kind of scary for me, but I had a lot of fun and went almost everywhere - there were a few places I had to say "no." My mother-in-law took more photos of the 2 of us with her camera. I'll try to get some of those later.

There are also "artsy" places at the museum. Here, we spent time with the snowflake lady. She's written 5 or 6 books about snowflakes. Here, Alexandra is showing her dolphin snowflake. I bought one of the books, so I'm sure you'll be seeing more snowflakes soon!

Yikes! Once again, I'm filming sideways. Sorry! Anyway, I can't believe anyone would want to go through tunnels like these. And, some of these were 3 stories up in the air. Yikes!!!

Alexandra LOVED this ball pit. As you can see, you use the monkey bars to get over these beach sized balls, and then drop about 5 feet. I got in the pit, but never tried the bars.

Another room was set up like a skateboarding area, but it was to run in.

She loved playing in here.

And, we both enjoyed this 3 story slide. What a ride! And, I went SO fast going down this. Then, of course, you had to climb back up 3 stories - and these are TALL stories.

So, that was our wonderful day at City Museum. I'd love to take her back there soon! Too bad it is so far away...

Day 3: Botanical Gardens

I have quite a bit still to post about from our wonderful trip to St. Louis with the suprise ending trip to the hospital. And, I can't believe it, but after 2 days back at home... Alexandra woke up sick in the middle of the night! So, I guess we'll wait a little longer to get "back to normal."

So, this is a continuation of Day 3. We spent the morning at The Science Center and headed about a mile down the road to the Missouri Botanical Gardens in the late afternoon. We spent our time in the kid's play area where there are lots of things to climb on and then went to the Rainforest area. We didn't have much time left, so we just walked around looking at the beautiful flowers and sculptures. They also have the largest Japanese gardens in the US and I really wanted to see that, but we just didn't have time.