The Long Awaited South Dakota!

We have all been looking forward to the South Dakota part of our trip because of Badlands and Black Hills. We spent a night in Sioux Falls. The hotel had an indoor pool that the kids loved.

The next morning we walked around Sioux Falls. Ryan has been quite the photographer on this trip! He is really into composing great pictures. He wants to create his own blog when we get home to showcase his trip photos. 

 On the long drive across South Dakota we stopped above the Missouri River to run around a bit and see the giant Sacajawea statue.

Most of South Dakota was beautifully green with great clouds, tons of fresh bugs on the windshield and a glorious 80 mph speed limit :) 

City Museum, Saint Louis

Ryan has declared City Museum his favorite place on Earth! He said it is even better than Plantation Farm Camp!! The only thing that would have made it better was if Carl was there to explore with him. We bought a cool book that explains the history and architecture of the place. It's basically 11 stories of crazy climbing structures, man made caves and slides. 

I LOVE that the two rules there are be kind, and don't do anything stupid! There were lots of opportunities to do stupid stuff, like climb on the outside of the 8 story castle. We didn't do that, but saw kids getting yelled at for it. 

There's even a ferris wheel on the roof!

Both kids loved the human hamster wheel.

Climbing through the duct work.

Giant Ball Pit

They have circus shows several times a day

You climb into tiny holes not knowing where they take you. We brought head lamps!

I think City Museum (and Companion Cafe) will be enough to bring us back to Saint Louis at some point! 

Saint Louis, Missouri

We found more to do in Saint Louis than I had expected! On the first day we went to the Gateway Arch. The surrounding parks are under construction (I feel like all of America is either under construction or opening for the season the week after we are there...)

I had no idea that the pods that take you up to the top of the arch are so small. The 5 occupants are literally all touching knees, and by the end of the 4 minute journey up it feels like there is very little air left. On the way up we rode up with a couple from San Jose and they told us about the City Museum (which ended up being so amazing and led to tons of pictures- so it gets its' own post :)

As you can imagine the views from the top are amazing! Just don't look straight down!!

The windows to look out are really tiny.

The Arch is 630 feet tall and 630 feet wide. Looking up at it from the bottom was more awe inspiring than I expected.

The Mississippi is very flooded!

We thought this was cool since we hope to see a lot of bison on our next stop in South Dakota.

In the Arch Visitor Center they have this amazing brick mural .

You can see how flooded the Mississippi River is. 

The Jefferson National Expansion Memorial includes the court house where the Dred Scott Decision was made. Inside the courthouse is beautiful! 

There were people at the memorial who actually helped to build the Arch for a special event. This is the event photographer. He gave the kids a book about the building of the Arch that he took the pictures for.

From the courthouse entrance.

Practicing bridge pose at the base of the arch.

Hotel beds are good for jumping! 

On Monday we went to Six Flags Saint Louis. It isn't as good as the one in Vallejo. It was mostly rides for really little kids and giant rollercoasters. 

Ryan was angry that he had forced us all onto the water rides!

We were supposed to head out of town after Six Flags, but Ryan was wishing that we could go to City Museum again- so we did! He was shocked when I said that we could! He said but that's not the plan! I am trying to show them what it feels like to live without a plan, and just follow our whims each day. 

That night we had food delivered to our hotel room and watched Full House. The kids have been watching the very first season and loving it. It's shocking how much I remember of the episodes. It's weird how the brain works, I don't remember far too much of my childhood, but I can remember what's going to happen in a sitcom that I watched 25 years ago. 

We couldn't do another La Quinta breakfast so we tried Companion Cafe. It was AWESOME! It's a cafe with great food, a bakery and a cooking school. I wish I could open up a place like this at home!