Travelogue continued

More from the saga of our cross country journey...

After we left Oklahoma, we made a stop in Springfield, MO, to see my Aunt, Uncle and cousins. We had a quick but fun visit with them (thanks guys for the upstairs "suite" and Andy's frozen custard!), ate our favorite pizza (do you get the sense that we're really into food?), and headed to St. Louis the next morn.

We got to St. Louis around noon, drove by and the girls marveled at the Arch, then went straight to the City Museum. (click to go to their website). This was a most unique and amazing place. It is housed in an old office/warehouse, that is several stories high. Right now, they use four of the floors, and everything in it is made out of recycled materials; some are intact materials that are used for other purposes, some are recylced material that have been fashioned into new things.

It is like a kids' giant wonderland. The entire front of the building on the outside is a 4 story play structure, fashioned from ribar, other found metal, ropes, gratings, etc., and two old airplanes. Here we are in the midst of climbing; you can see part of Jenna at the right of the pic climbing through a ribar tube; Anya and I are at center.

Above us is one of the planes. As we continued to climb up, we ended up out on one wing, ready to climb down another way.

This thing was just huge! We stayed out there and climbed around, but eventually had to head inside due to rain. Inside, there was a cave, complete with "fossils" and "dino bones" that had tunnels running the entire heighth and probably 1/3 the floor area of the building. There was also a kind of skate park on the top floor, but instead of being on wheels, you simply slid and swung in your shoes.

Jenna here is perched atop one of the many slide pits, and there were multiple others, shaped more like ramps that you could run, jump and slide on. There was also swinging ropes, so the girls made like Tarzan, or I should say they made like Jane.There were also more climbing tubes inside the building, and Anya tackled a lot of them.

The adults didn't explore the tubes. We, uh, supervised.

There was also a giant barrel. What it had been used for previously, I haven't a notion. But it was turned on it's side and set on rollers, so it was like a giant hamster wheel for humans. The girls and I climbed in while Karen snapped us.However, it is remarkably hard to keep going in a giant hamster wheel. You feel very disoriented, and start to roll backwards, because the only way to keep going is to try to climb the curved wall in front of you, but that feels wrong because it's moving under you and so eventually you end up like this:We laughed a lot, and had a lot of people watching laughing with us.

This is the girls inside of some kind of formed ocean-like creature (also made from recycled materials). This opening was one of the many entrances to the cave.

It was a fascinating place. During part of our visit to the museum, a funnel cloud was spotted near downtown, where the museum is, so they had everybody go down to the first floor (where presumably we would be safe. I just kept thinking we were setting ourselves up to be human pancakes under all the above floors). After about 20 minutes, the tornado warning was lifted and we re-explored the museum.

Great place...if you ever get to St. Louis, don't miss it!

That night, we stayed with "Honey Karen", G'pa's sister. We all call her Honey Karen, because my neice and nephew needed a way to distinguish between their Aunt Karen (as in Karen Smith) and their great Aunt Karen (as in Karen Lebb). So they started calling her Honey Karen, and now the rest of us have joined in.

We had a great visit with her and her daughter Andi; they cooked us a fabulous meal of Chinese cuisine and delectible ice cream pie -- one of my favorites from childhood. It's a rice krispie and chocolate crust with ice cream inside. Simple, but heavens-to-mergatroid it's tasty! G'pa's dad and his wife Marilyn also came over, so we had a fun evening catching up with everyone. Joe, Karen's hubby, who always keeps us entertained with his wry humor, alas, had to work that eve. We missed him, but ate much in his honor. (Did I mention we kind of like food? The first night at the Grimes house, we all agreed that if there are two kinds of people, those who eat to live and those who live to eat, we're definitely live-to-eaters. There's just too much good stuff to enjoy!)

Enough for now. Next post: the dreaded traffic messes on I-70, my near miss in fulfilling a dream of over 20 years, and finally arriving in the city of brotherly love!