Share the Adventure: CO Road Trip Day 1

On Day 1, we hit the ground running! Amy had driven down to our house the night before and spent the night with us so that we could leave around 7:00 (Lucas and I make it a practice not to drive at night, even though that would be helpful in getting the kids to sleep on the road!)

I knew Amy was a good choice to bring with us, not only because she's a dear friend and great with kids and stays positive through the chaos and was available (as a teacher who is single), but because she delights in the simplest pleasures. When she marveled at cornfields in Illinois, I knew she'd be blown away by the mountains. She had never been west of Chicago, so this was a new adventure for her, and she soaked it all in.

The boys enjoyed their road trip binders (at least until the novelty wore off) and also liked following our trail on the road atlas.

We had a brief bathroom stop in Santa Claus, Indiana, and then...St. Louis!

St. Louis is one of my favorite cities to visit as a family -- it's got the Arch and the City Museum (coolest place ever!) and an awesome children's museum, and the Zoo and Science Center are free! Since we had a 7 hour drive that day (2 hours to go after St. Louis), we couldn't stay long, but I planned a stop at the Citygarden Sculpture Park. What I didn't anticipate was that, because of a Cardinals game, we wouldn't be able to find easy parking. Since I thought our van would be close, I didn't prepare lunch in an easy-to-reach spot, so I had to dig and grab some random food items, feed the meter, and head to the park.

We plopped down for lunch (just on the grass because there were no benches nearby and we were tired) near a geocache.

Also since we weren't parked close, we didn't have their sandals or a change of clothes handy, so I had told them not to get too wet. Ha! How can they avoid sprinklers on a hot day?

Eventually, I just let them get as wet as they wanted. This was a cool rock and waterfall area that got them soaking wet but wasn't too deep for them.

We also enjoyed walking around and climbing on all the neat sculptures in the park.

This was as close as we got to the Arch, but I love how it's visible in different parts of the city.

Adjacent to the sculpture park was a neat urban playground. We only had about 10 minutes here because our meter time was running out! (and we weren't sure exactly where we parked!)

We made it back with minutes to spare, and Colson conked out after all that playing. We still had 2 hours left to drive to our AirBnB.

Home, sweet, home in Centralia, Missouri. I realized later that this was a bit more out of the way than desired (30 minutes off the interstate), but I chose it because of the bedroom options, great reviews, and park/splash pad within walking distance.

We ate a yummy quesadilla dinner. This was the night that Colson referred to Amy's Fiji water bottle as "hanitizer" (hand sanitizer). "Miss Amy, don't drink the hanitizer!"