Missouri

We entered Missouri on Tuesday afternoon when we drove into Kansas City to visit Science City which is housed in Union Station. On Wednesday morning our first stop was the Kansas City Zoo which is a large zoo. Typically on this vacation I have been getting fewer steps than I usually do in a day, but Wednesday was an exception. We all got a LOT of steps in that day even though we "splurged" and paid to ride the sky ride to the Africa section. Originally, I had booked a factory tour at Roasterie, a coffee company, but they had called to cancel all tours for the month a couple of weeks ago. This enabled us to spend more time at the zoo. After we finished exploring the zoo, we drove back into the downtown area to visit the National WW1 Museum and Memorial. We went to the top of the tower, and the boys completed a booklet similar to a Junior Ranger booklet in the museum. Nadia mostly sat and looked at her cell phone. The regional Federal Reserve Bank is located within walking distance of the WW1 Museum, so we also spent a few minutes in the Money Museum before driving to the Mexican restaurant where we were having dinner. The kids each received a bag of shredded money. Paul was the only one who was able to lift the 27-pound gold bar with one hand. After dinner we drove about 3.5 hours toward the eastern side of Missouri. We spent the night at a hotel near the Meramac Caverns.

At 9:00am on Thursday we began our tour of the caverns, which were at one point a hideout for Jesse James. Our second stop was the site where Ulysses S. Grant met his wife, Julia. He and his wife lived in the home for 5.5 years. We saw the movie, went on a guided tour of the home, and the kids each earned a Junior Ranger badge. Our third stop of the day was our only industrial tour for this vacation at the Herbaria Soap factory. Originally, I had planned for us to spend 2-3 days in St. Louis. The first thing that was eliminated was Six Flags St. Louis because we shortened the length of the vacation. Later the Saint Louis Zoo and Saint Louis Science Center were eliminated (even though both have excellent reviews and we could have gone to both of them for free) because we decided to spend an extra day in Indiana. The thing that I viewed as the most important site to see in Saint Louis was the Gateway Arch. We watched the movie, explored the museum so the kids could earn a Junior Ranger badge, and rode a tram to the top of the Arch. On our way back to the parking garage, we picked up one large St. Louis style pizza. Their pizza is made without yeast, so the crust is very thin, and they use Provel cheese, which is a combination of cheddar, provolone, and Swiss cheese. The slices are cut into squares instead of wedges. One 16-inch pizza cost almost exactly the same as what we pay for two 16-inch pizzas at home, but still that was a much cheaper meal than going to a sit-down restaurant albeit we had to pay with a credit card whereas we almost always use gift cards at restaurants. We ate our pizza in our hotel room and then drove about two miles to the Fabulous Fox Theatre where we saw a touring Broadway performance of Wicked. It was the boys fourth time to see a Broadway show and Nadia's fifth because I took her to see Cinderella several years ago. The two main characters were particularly outstanding. We all enjoyed the show. The downside was the performance didn't end until 10:20pm, which means most of us were up past our usual bedtime. 

In the previous itinerary, we weren't leaving early on Friday morning because we were still going to be in St. Louis, but when we made the decision to spend Friday at Wilstem Wildlife Park that meant we had to leave St. Louis bright and early on Friday morning because we had to drive over 3.5 hours to get there. Part of Indiana is in Central Time Zone, but very close to the Wildlife Park we returned to Eastern Time. So that meant I got up at 5:15am and we left our room around 5:45am (Central Time) in order to get to Wilstem around 10:30 Eastern Time. All of the other days on this trip we've had a free breakfast at either Wendy's home or at a hotel, but the hotel where we stayed in St. Louis didn't offer a free breakfast, so we stopped at a McDonald's drive-thru on the way to Wilstem. The kids drove through part of Indiana in 2017 on our way to and from Chicago, but the first time they did something in the state was in 2020 when we walked over the pedestrian bridge from Louisville, Kentucky to Jeffersonville, Indiana and took a tour of Schimpff's Confectionery. In the earlier itinerary I thought we'd only spend one day in Indiana visiting the Indianapolis Zoo, Benjamin Harrison's Presidential Site, and the Children's Museum, and I thought we'd visit Indiana Dunes on our way to Chicago. In the end, it turns out that we didn't make it to the Indianapolis Zoo this morning or Indiana Dunes last week, but I do think we will visit the Presidential Site and Children's Museum today. Life is full of twists and turns.