Super St. Louis, Part 4

Sunday was...a bit of a mess.  The big boys got a ride to the basketball facility first thing in the morning and Carter and I were left to pack up and check out.  Originally I had been hoping we'd have enough time to do the Arch while they were gone, but between the time and duration of the game, the distance back to the facility to get them, and (lack of) availability of Arch tickets, it wasn't going to work.  I couldn't have booked Arch tickets ahead because we just didn't know when we could make it there, and by the time I checked, they were only available later than would have been ideal for getting out of town.  So, I settled on being okay with just getting a quick outside look at the Arch from the park around it as we were heading back out of town.  When we picked up the guys from the game, Jacob was starving (breakfast options ended up being really hard on this trip without a free hotel breakfast buffet--they had free breakfast bags for us, but all he could eat was yogurt), so we tried twice to find somewhere for him to eat.  It didn't go particularly well and ended up taking forever...like over an hour.  We finally found a place where he was able to get a giant pancake to go, which was great, but it also got us out of sync for meals (we were almost ready for lunch but not quite).  While we were waiting for Jacob's food, I realized that there were now different ticket times available for the Arch, so Carter and I could go up after all!  Well, I picked a time thinking it was doable to get there, but baseball game traffic ended up being a problem and by the time we got into a parking ramp nearby (at baseball game rates, ugh), we were going to have to walk very fast to get there in time for our appointment.  The website had recommended a half hour for security and we could only afford less than half of that to make it on time.

When we pulled into the ramp, Craig suddenly realized how close everything was to the baseball stadium.  I was like, "I told you that the parking for the Arch was shared with the baseball stadium, so how did you not realize it was close?!"  I had mentioned the previous night that there was an option to book parking the night before at the lower non-game rate to go to the Arch but I didn't do it because our plans were so up in the air and I wasn't sure I could do it without a reservation anyway.  In retrospect, I definitely should have tried since we were going to be in the area one way or another.  Oh well.  But once he saw the proximity, he really wanted to go to the Cardinals game.  And despite Jacob saying no to the game all weekend, suddenly he was on board, too.  I was pretty much furious at this point because I'd been trying to get them to go to the game all weekend and now we were rushing to get to the Arch but they were deciding we should all go to the game with zero notice!  And did I mention that the game had already started?  It felt so chaotic and rushed.  Going to the game meant that I needed to change (in the van) from capris into shorts and rethink what I was bringing with me, which just added time, and as it was Carter and I would likely miss a bunch of the game because of the time it would take to do the Arch.  But Craig said he'd try to find cheap tickets and leave them for us at will call.  

I was very angry and possibly a little sweary as Carter and I left them and made our way to the Arch.  We could have done things so much more relaxed and orderly if anyone would have listened to me, but nooooo.  I guess to some degree I'm not sure we would have been able to make both work under "calm" planning because the timing of the Arch tickets would have inevitably overlapped and we would have likely scrapped one or the other.  But doing it on a whim made the game merely a bonus, so I guess it had to be crazy like this and happen in a way where missing part of the game was acceptable because it was the one way we were able to do both.  Anyway, it still sounded insane and I was worried that being late to the Arch would blow our chance to make it to the game, but we rushed over and hoped for the best.  Luckily we ended up walking the last stretch with an older guy who was in a similar boat--running late for his time and trying to meet up with family who he'd split from in an effort to park the car and somehow get there on time.  I didn't feel as bad when their appointment time was earlier than ours!  This was the view as we tried crossing all the streets to get over to the Arch entrance.

The Arch itself is so striking.  This was the last view of it before heading inside and underground.

Luckily security was very fast--similar to going into any sports facility these days, but with the airport bin system--and it only took a couple minutes.  There was a whole museum I would have loved to check out, but we were too nervous about missing our time, so we just glanced at it all and soldiered on.  I think it was mostly about Thomas Jefferson and the westward expansion of the country.  Probably some construction details in there, too, I assume.

Looking back at the museum area

We waited in line for a while because only one group goes up and down at a time.  We were getting text updates from Craig as they got into the stadium.  We finally got in to watch a video on the Arch's history prior to going to the loading area.  The loading area was tiered with a series of what looked like tiny elevator doors.  As I said, only one load of people can be active at a time--they go up, have about 10 minutes to get their views, and then come back down.  Another group immediately loads and has their time.  So once the group ahead of us went up, we queued at the doors but had to wait for them to come back down.  There were fun fact projections on the doors as we waited, but given our time constraints I was feeling very impatient!

The pods we went up in were impossibly tiny!  Only a four-foot-high entrance, five seats in a half circle, and a very low rounded ceiling with a small glass windowed door.  If I bang my head, you know it's small!

We were in with three guys who I think were from England.  I would have made conversation except that the one guy was filming the entire trip up and down and I didn't want to mess it up too badly.  It was an interesting ride.  Not entirely smooth but generally fine, slow but still slightly unnerving.  It was like a regular elevator at first, but presumably as the angle of the arch changed, it felt like it was shifting on to a new set of track.  It was interesting to see the "guts" of the arch.  But I really would not have wanted to be on that if it broke down!  It was so confining!

The views from up top were through tiny windows.  The space was pretty small and split in half for each leg's set of passengers.  The floor itself was slightly arched.  The first thing I wanted to see was the baseball game!  We'd be down there in a little bit--not too often you can photograph the game you'll be at from this vantage point, while it's already happening!

We actually had a pretty good view inside the stadium when I zoomed in with my real camera.  Our seats ended up being a couple sections over from where the stadium disappears behind the glass building on the right, on the second level.

This was as zoomed as I could get--not too bad!

I was also eager to get the iconic view of the old courthouse from above.  Here it is from afar...

And up close!

We could see a helicopter taking off (and later flying around our arch eye level!) from this landing pad right on the Mississippi River...

And while the river wasn't exactly picturesque or as mighty as I may have envisioned it, it was still cool to see.

I loved this odd shadow shot.

These were the only riverboats I noticed along the river.

Interestingly, I looked at pictures my dad took when he went up in the 80s, and the skyline and river were remarkably similar.  The stadium shifted over a bit when the new one was built, and there were a couple new buildings, but most of it was pretty much the same.  One of the biggest differences was the riverboats.  There were a bunch back then and only this dock in sight now.

As I said, the windows were tiny.  You can just see them from the underside of the arch.

Our time up top was pretty limited, but I think we covered all we needed to.  Then it was back down in the same tiny pod with our previous co-passengers, and off we went to make our way to the game.  But first, some Arch pictures from the ground.  This is how it looked coming out of the underground lobby.

It's just a little bit big!

All of the pictures I took looking up were blind shots because the sun was blinding--bright as it was, let alone shining off the Arch--and my sunglasses fell out of my purse when I was changing into shorts in the back of the van.  But this one is sort of fun.

If you look really closely on this one, you can see the windows as dots along the edge of the very top.

It was really a striking monument.  Shiny, bold, iconic, and just huge.  It's sort of amazing how it just plants its "feet" into the ground.

After being stunned at its appearance as Jacob and I drove by in April, I'm so thrilled Carter and I were able to do this less than two months later.  It's just one of those very Americana things to do, and we can check it off our list!

We started the trek back over to the baseball stadium to track down our tickets and take in the last few innings (ugh), but I had to get a picture of the courthouse along the way.  I remember that my favorite webcam site used to have a camera looking at the courthouse, and I always thought it had to be cool and rather picturesque being in the shadow of the Arch.  I'm guessing the camera went away around when the Arch became an official national park.

As we walked, we noticed a lot of people leaving the game.  We hadn't even gotten there yet, and people were leaving in droves!  Yes, the Cardinals were up pretty big, but still.  We knew they were leaving the game because they had in hand that day's giveaway, a golf umbrella.  Along the way we noticed this cool mini Arch themed to the Cardinals and snapped a pic while waiting at a red light.

We were almost there, with not much time to spare.  And...I think I'll leave the ballgame for another post!

Super St. Louis, Part 3

Our next stop on Saturday was the City Museum.  I think my first knowledge that it existed came from a social media influencer I follow.  The family has quadruplet girls a little younger than Carter, and months ago they went to St. Louis for what I think was some Mormon stuff.  They briefly mentioned in a post about this crazy museum with a ton of slides.  I didn't think much of it at the time but when it turned out we were going to St. Louis, I tracked it down and was shocked to see all that was there.  I knew it would be right up Carter's alley--I just hoped we had enough time to take it all in!

We got there and ended up parking in the first lot we saw, which ended up being pricer than the other side of the museum...ugh.  Regardless, I was happy we were there and it was just a quick walk to the entrance.  The museum is built in an old shoe factory, and as we walked up we saw this.  I realized right away it was one of the more than 30 slides in the museum...except this one was outside the building!

This was our first view as we got to the entrance.  Just this--the planes, the platforms and the serpent creature--made me wonder what we were in for!

This was the ticket window.  It looked like they took the entire facade of a building and put it right into another building.  

There were not any maps for us to use.  I think they just wanted people to explore for themselves, but over the course of the day it got to be disorienting and a little exhausting trying to figure the place out.  There were so many little nooks and crannies and shortcuts between floors via some of the slides and tunnels that it was hard to keep track of where we were or what we'd seen.  Within the first 20 minutes I was completely overwhelmed and confused and bewildered by all of the bizarre stuff, but I tried to just go with it.  

This was one of the first areas we saw.  The ceiling alone--trying to make it look like we were underwater--was impressive, let alone all the sea theming and that coil that could have been climbed up by a person much smaller than I!

We somehow ended up in the caves pretty quickly, which were twisting rock tunnels with holes and little slides and spots where you had no idea where you'd pop out if you went in--and I was sure I'd get stuck anyway!  It was mostly dark but lit with colored lights so it was hard to make sense of anything.  It was so strange and disorienting, but eventually we realized it led up into the museum's centerpiece, a series of industrial chutes turned slides.  There were 5, 6, 7, and 10 story slides.  I'm still not sure we did them all because it was so confusing among endless one way spiral staircases.  I was a little concerned because you couldn't even wear a small cross body bag on the slides and I had no one to give mine to--I was worried that if I gave mine to Carter to get a ride, I'd lose him because it was so hard to figure out which slide exited where!  Eventually I found a set of free lockers to leave your stuff where you could program your own code.  Thank goodness for those.  But the slides went up so far!  And there wasn't an elevator so we definitely got our workout going up to the top!

This is what the slides looked like.  I can't say they were the most comfortable to go down--probably easier for kids than adults, but unlike regular spiral slides I didn't feel like I was going to break my ankles!  

The 10-story slide was pretty crazy.  It seemed to go on quite a while.  It was probably only 20-30 seconds, but it was more than most!  We did the slides until we were sweaty and I couldn't take any more stairs.  We did do another round near the end of the day, and by then my watch was saying we'd climbed about 46 flights of stairs!  Suffice it to say we were exhausted by the end and I was VERY sore the next day!  But this was just the beginning!

We went back around that ocean-themed area, but realized we might need to go through the indoor treehouse tunnels to get to the whale.  Supposedly these are real trees that have grown up through the floors.  Hard to say, but this was quite the twisted tunnel.  We did manage to crawl and climb through there, small as it looks!

We finally made it to the whale's butt, past a waterfall and more detours, and walked out its mouth.

There was a small aquarium section, and it was possible to climb through that tiny opening in the shell under this guy, through a tunnel, and go down a slide.  Carter wasn't convinced he wanted to try that one--it was tight and dark!

He did climb into the middle of a tank, though!

We were tickled to find a series of sculptures throughout the museum featuring the same little characters as the Memorial Art Gallery Sculpture Park.  They were getting into much more mischief here, though!

They also had the World's Largest Pencil, 76 feet long with real graphite!

The pencil was in the area called the "Skateless Park", which looked like a skate park but was made to run around.  They had ramps, ropes to swing between ramps, and areas like this.
 

They had a bunch of these rolling chairs.  Carter had a heck of a time getting the hang of shifting his weight to make it roll AND having faith it wouldn't dump him out!

I figured it out, but as you can see by my face, it did feel a little precarious!

There was a giant spider web (cargo net), and this was the entrance...

This was a dizzying climb that must have been an extension of the tree house on to the floor above.  It looks dizzying from here.  There were a couple slides at the very top.

This slide was nearby--the entrance to the one we'd seen outside the building.  

This is what it looked like inside:

I should also mention that the museum had a bunch of architectural collections as well.  They had rooms of countless architectural details from buildings, like carved stone trims and giant carved seals.  I wish I had more time to look at them.  They also had a bug and taxidermy collection, as well as things found in outhouses--we missed that, although I think I know where that may have been.  There was also a collection of Louis Sullivan stuff, which may have been some of those carved details, and I was a little bummed I missed that because I did a paper on one of his buildings (the Guaranty Building in Buffalo) in college.  

We had to get a picture with the Big Boy!

And another with a giant version of the guys from the MAG.  There was a whole series with this moneybag he's holding, and in the end it looked like some hamsters made off with it in a car!  Another guy got pulled into the sewer by an alligator!

We didn't stop to watch this for more than 30 seconds, but who knew there was a circus ring in the middle of the museum?!  

Around this area was a strange bar that had a giant pair of underwear on the wall and a creepy, giant clown head.  There was also a pinball arcade and a miniature train setup.  Oh, and one wall had a very simple map of the museum painted on it, but it was only moderately helpful to figure out what we hadn't seen yet!

We finally made our way outside to what they call MonstroCity.  It was a crazy, tetanus-filled fantasy playground - old planes, lots of tunnels and bridges, a couple castle turrets, and much more.  Some of it looked downright painful to climb through, but we did make it through the planes and through a couple precarious tubes and bridges.  It was truly mind-boggling that they brought all of this in.  I can't emphasize enough how many times I marveled at the amount of metal climbing structures used in this place.  It was incredible, but I suppose the metalworkers loved it!

Sadly there were a handful of closed slides, both inside and out.  There was one that baffled us the entire time until we finally figured out how to get to what was once the entrance, only to find it blocked.  Ugh.  A couple of cool-looking outside ones were blocked off as well.  They had a few steep ones like this that were intimidating even to me...but fun!

There was one section that had some funky artwork on display, which of course was right up my alley!  There was this piece that looked like a giant glass floor...

But if you looked close, this was what was holding up the glass!

They were the size of army men, but they were all doing this!

We got a kick out of the sausage man.

This reminded me of a piece I've seen at the Corning Museum of Glass.  Images are put on layers of glass that made it look 3-D when they are put together.  I don't think it's the same artist, but it's definitely the same technique.  

We paid extra to go up to the rooftop.  I figured if we were going to do this, we had to do it all.  The roof was just as wacky.  The area below had some hippos to play on, and you can see an elephant in the distance.  To the right was another steep slide that you could climb up to with a rope.  Behind me was a school bus that was half hanging off the building roof!

On the top level was a ferris wheel, and you could go up into that cage in the middle and go down another giant slide to the level below.  I almost couldn't ride that one because of my bag but she let me go--I think the idea of climbing back down was too complicated!  

This structure was both a climb (top) and a slide (bottom).  I wasn't sure I wanted to do this one--I'm sure the slide would have been great but the landing looked less than ideal.  Carter actually bumped his head pretty hard on the metal as he got up.

Here's Carter getting to the top, near the giant praying mantis!

The view from up around the mantis was really impressive.  You could see everything from up there...except the Arch, which was blocked by buildings!

We got one of the last rides on the ferris wheel (whew), and Carter had never been on one like this so the freefall feeling threw him off a bit!  But he loved it!

We climbed up in the one bubble structure in the first roof picture.  We both banged our heads a bunch as it got skinnier, but it was worth it for this shot!

We headed back inside with less than an hour to go, and looked for anything we missed or wanted to check out again.  Carter wanted to master the one skateless park wall.  He couldn't quite hoist himself up (Ninja Warrior will have to wait, I guess), but at least he got the edge!

Carter also did this slide which came down a couple floors!

You can see more of the slide on the left in this picture, which I think best captures the bizarre chaos of the whole museum.  It was absolutely insane.  I can't even tell you how many times I looked around and said, "This place is nuts."

We went back through the aquarium and saw this guy in a little cove...

But this guy was real!  I don't think I've ever seen a real axolotl!  They had a few different colored ones, but this guy was so cute.  He reminded me of the internet celebrity one whose owner does dry erase art and sticks things on the glass to "dress" it up!

Carter did this whale slide...

And then we climbed back through some more structures while trying to find the last confusing slides.  We finally got to this lumpy one.  

I crammed myself into so many tiny spaces that day.  I can't imagine being any taller or fatter because I was really at my limit a lot of the time.  The museum encourages parents to let their children "get lost" because there are so many kid-sized spots, but no thanks...but if you're bigger, I can't imagine how you can avoid it if you want your kid to get the full experience.  Living in a city that calls Strong Museum home, this was a totally different kid museum experience.  Strong Museum is amazing and I wouldn't trade it for the world, but this was definitely a unique, metal-filled, bigger kid adventure in comparison.

It was getting close to closing time so we took a quick look in the store and finally headed out.  Our next stop was IKEA (it was on the way back--how could we not?), and we ended up getting detoured for a block party near the hockey arena.  We saw this view along the way...

...and then found out by accident that St. Louis has an MLS team, because there were crowds everywhere going to a soccer game!  The scarves were the tip-off...

In my amazement I snapped a picture of the outside of the stadium so I could confirm that's what we were actually seeing!

I felt terrible that I didn't know there was an MLS team there.  Had we known, we probably would have tried to get Carter to the game!  There were tons of people (including a large contingent of visiting Kansas City fans) all around the stadium.

We stopped at IKEA to look for a couple things and maybe get an ice cream, but the cafe was closed so the only thing we ended up getting was a pack of cinnamon rolls!  Oh, well.  After that we headed out to get Craig and Jacob at the basketball facility.  We had to wait a while, and it turned out the end of the game got a little nuts with a fight, but at least they won.  Unfortunately, it took so long that by the time they came out, our dinner plan was in jeopardy.  I found this amazing restaurant that had an extensive gluten-free menu (and the regular menu was amazing, too), but when we got there there was a sign that said the kitchen was closed.  Supposedly the kitchen should have been open later, but even if it was closing an hour earlier than the bar, it should have just been closing.  Craig asked, and thankfully they were willing to make our food.  I'm wondering if the fact that Jacob was gluten-free and we were desperate won them over.  We had a drink while we waited (and watched the soccer game on TV!), and took the food back to our room.  Everyone loved their meals, so we were very grateful they were willing to do it for us.  But it had been a long day so it was soon bedtime for all of us!  

We weren't entirely sure what Sunday would hold--going up in the Arch was looking less likely, Jacob wasn't interested in the Cardinals game, and we still had half of a long drive ahead of us--but either way there was one basketball game and hopefully an outside Arch visit so we still needed our rest!  But what an amazing day it had been for Carter and me!  We were exhausted, our feet were killing us, and my Apple Watch stats were crazy--like almost Disney level!  I had 741 move calories (goal was 390), 95 minutes of exercise (goal was 20), 18,721 steps, and 8.32 miles, in addition to a final tally of 47 flights climbed.  It was a lot and Jacob wondered why we would put ourselves through that kind of pain, but I was so happy we did it all.  Pain is temporary but memories are hopefully forever!