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.
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!
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:
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?!
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...
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| They were the size of army men, but they were all doing this! |
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!
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.
...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...
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| 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!
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