Midwestern Road Trip - Part 2

St. Louis!!!  and thereabouts

Day 6:  We stayed on the base at Scott AFB and woke up early to visit Cahokia Mounds - a native American site nearby.  The visitor's center is down for refurbishment, which was a shame since it was very informative from what I remember.  But we had a good time walking up the grand mound.  We had a great view of the St. Louis skyline from there.

On top of ground mound - if you look real close you can see the St. Louis skyline to the left of Matthew's head.

John was feeling a little sick on this day - and we decided it didn't really warrant a down day. He struggled along as best he could - but there was a lot of resting.

On the same day we had lunch at a favorite place of mine in Shiloh - just a sandwich shop but good memories.

At lunch - Shiloh, Illinois - memories!!

Scott had to go get his picture taken for the ceremony - here he is in our house we were renting.

Scott's professional picture

And later in the day...

The City Museum: One of our top priorities was to see the City Museum in St. Louis.  It is a museum full of things to climb in under and through, indoor/outdoor, dark, underground and claustrophobia inducing crawl throughs.  It's hard to fully grasp what is is like.  It's like a helicopter parents worst nightmare 'cause your kids will crawl through some creepy hole and come out in a totally different room or level of the museum.  It's made of a lot of interesting sculptural things from demolished buildings in St. Louis.  We had fun.

John wasn't feeling so great and got tired.

The coolest stuff in the museum is hard to photograph because its dark - but so many fun and scary crawl throughs - many of them too small or scary for me.

Goodbye City Museum - so fun!

Fitz's Root Beer

After a muggy afternoon crawling through all the things at the city museum we went to Fitz's for dinner, a St. Louis soda shop.  You get free refills on root beer, and can swap for whatever other sodas they have on tap (maybe 6 or 7 kinds - the rest are bottled).

We got an amazing root beer float - they have so many kinds

Lots of refills!!

And we enjoyed some gooey butter cake there too - another St. Louis specialty

more adventures to come

Midwestern Road Trip - Part 1

Washington to Nauvoo

We went on a long road trip this summer from Washington to the St. Louis area and back by way of Michigan.  The main reason for this trip was to attend Scott's retirement ceremony from the Air Force at the base he is currently a reservist at, Scott Air Force Base in southern Illinois.  It is about 30 minutes from St. Louis, Missouri and we were stationed there from 2013 to 2015.  Matthew and Anna, who were in 1st and 2nd grade then, remember it, but the other kids don't really.  Near St. Louis we visited some of our old favorite places and on the way home hit 3 states we hadn't been to yet.  Scott and I had both been to 46/50 states prior to this trip.  And we were able to hit 3 of the remaining 4 (Michigan, Minnesota and North Dakota - only Alaska now remains unvisited for us).  Here is a map of our approximate route.

Day 1: We drove from our home in Washington to Middleton, Idaho and stayed with Scott's sister and her family.  We arrived so late (nearly midnight) and the Kenners welcomed us so warmly!!  It was fun to see them and so nice of them to let us stay, if only briefly.

Day 2:  We drove from Middleton, ID to Cheyenne, WY stopping in Ogden, UT for lunch.  It was just a long day of driving and we didn't arrive in Cheyenne until late.  We went to Texas Roadhouse in Cheyenne for dinner, which everyone was looking forward to since we don't have one near us.  We ate dinner late in Cheyenne and eventually got to our lodging room on the Air Force base in Cheyenne.  We had stayed there once before years ago.  This time our room was kind of creepy and old and filled with moths by the time we got there (near 10 or 11 pm).  Matthew, Scott and Grant (I think) spent time killing all the moths in the room.  Thank you!!

Day 3:  We drove another long day from Cheyenne to Hannibal, Missouri.  We had lunch somewhere in Nebraska and dinner near St. Joseph, Missouri.  Everyone commented how hot and humid it was when we stopped for dinner in Missouri.  Yes.  That is summer in the midwest from what I recall.  We got in late to Hannibal.

Day 4:  We spent the day touring Hannibal, Missouri, the childhood hometown of Mark Twain.  Tom Sawyer is one of my favorite books and I loved visiting Hannibal when we lived in Illinois and wanted to go back since we had the chance.  The caves he wrote about in Tom Sawyer are real caves and we visited them.  We also got to see his childhood home and some of the other downtown sites.

Day 5:  We drove a short distance from Hannibal, MO to Nauvoo, IL and visited the church history sites there including Carthage Jail.  We loved going on the carriage tour of Nauvoo and saw more of Carthage Jail than we had on our previous visit.  At the end of the day we drove down to Scott, AFB (through hours of small towns and corn fields in Illinois) and checked in at the Air Force Base.  We got to stay in a nice little 4 bedroom/ 2 bath house on the base.  Very comfortable - everyone was excited to stay there.

In Nauvoo

Nauvoo carriage ride tour

Carthage Jail

More to come!!

Chicago

Scott and I went on a quick weekend trip to Chicago last weekend.  My parents came and stayed with the kids so we could get away.  Scott had a work trip to Chicago most of the week and I flew out on Friday afternoon to meet him.  We walked around downtown Chicago Friday evening.

In the Mart - an old Art Deco style building next to our hotel

They had a bunch of sculptures built out of canned goods - they were built by teams of college students and the cans were donated to a food bank after being used in the sculptures.

Jack Skellington

Deep dish pizza sculpture!!

That put us in the mood for real Chicago deep dish pizza

We went to Guy Malnati's this time.  Last time we went to Chicago we went to Gino' East.  

But I liked this place better.  It was the weekend of the Chicago Marathon when we were there so we ran into a lot of runners.

View from our hotel room - a little peek of the river

Walking along the river

Seeing some downtown sights

At the cloud gate sculpture

Seeing our reflection in the cloud gate

Walking back across the river

Having Chicago Dogs!

We wanted to try them - but neither Scott nor I really liked them.

Too much pickle and I like ketchup on a hot dog, but fun to give it a try.

Checking out Lake Michigan

Looking back at downtown

Hi Navy Pier!!

One of the main reasons for this trip was to see Hamilton

Here we are in downtown Chicago, getting ready to go see the show!

Inside!

Hamilton was amazing!  I'm so glad we got a chance to go.  Thank you mom and dad!

It was fun touring around Chicago and eating good food!  Before we knew it we were on our way back to Utah.  It was a great trip!