Stop 1 - St. Louis, Missouri

Of course I am behind already, it is Friday June 7th, and I am writing about Monday :(
I guess we are just having too much fun to sit down at the computer and write, which is a good thing.  The good news is so far so good:
- no accidents
- everything (but the radio) works in the RV.  It is an amazing computer system, so we just hook up the IPad or phone to the system and play Pandora or our music, so not like we are going without some tunes.  My favorite is Paul McCarthy station on Pandora, that is on when I drive.
- meals have gone well, I have managed to pull them off while driving, quickly at a rest stop or the usual when we are stopped at an RV park. 
- sleeping arrangements seem to change every night, which is part of the fun.  My parents are always on the Queen in the bedroom but the rest of us have changed beds quite a bit :)  And I have slept next to Arnie, Ben, Claire and Sarah at least once...that is a special treat for the kids for sure.

Our first stop was St. Louis on Sunday night.  The RV park was right in the city, 990 N. Jefferson Ave, at the corner of MLK for those familiar with St. Louis.  Both Arnie and I had been to St. Louis before for work.  P&G has a plant there that makes Mr. Clean, Cascade and some other stuff.  I came here back in the late 90's to see the plant when I worked on Mr. Clean, and Arnie came quite a bit between 2004-2007 when he ran Product Supply finance for Homecare.  But like any business trip we never really toured the city, so this was our chance.

Sunday night we just settled in and made dinner, no touring as we were tired.  We got some brochures from the office and planned our Monday.  We decided we would do the City Museum, The Arch and a Cardinal game.  Many people also recommended Pappy's BarBQ so we would go there for dinner.  Arnie and the kids biked around all day and I walked with my parents.  THe first stop was the City Museum and it was AWESOME - truly amazing.  Not sure how to describe it, like nothing I have ever been to before.  Somewhat giant jungle gym, even for adults.  Somewhat like the treehouse at Children's museum in Cincy, but on steroids.  Here are just some of the pics.

As you can see from some of the photos, Arnie and I went on all the climbers and slides, even the 10 story slide down.  The building was once a shoe factory, so the slide was there from those days.  While it was a lot of fun, the huge bruise on my knee is the daily reminder of how small some of those iron climbing structures really were.  Quite funny seeing Arnie and I trying to turn our 40 something year old bodies around, in a structure about 50 feet above the ground, as it switched from ascending to descending in nature.  After a few hours there which included all three kids and Arnie participating in the Circus, we headed down to the Arch.

The Arch is officially called the Jefferson Expansion Memorial, in honor of Thomas Jefferson and his Presidency which is when we expanded the US into the West as we know it now.  The Arch is magnificant in person, truly a jaw-dropping structure, no unlike the Statue of Liberty, Eiffel Tower and others.  We did take the capsule to the top, with all seven of us in one capsule.  That was an adventure in itself.  We had a nice aerial view from the top and then headed back down, a 3 minute journey compared to 4 minutes on the way up.  Here are our photos of the Arch.