We're here now in St. Louis, Missouri after a relatively short drive of 5.5 hours. We're staying actually in East St. Louis, Missouri, just across the river from the arch. As we walk out the camper, we get a great view of the arch.

Friday Update:

Today was a relatively calm day, which was good. We slept in a little, then headed out to the mall for a matinee showing of High School Musical 3, every father's dream afternoon, I'll tell you.

Of course, I've already seen the other 2 films, and they are pretty entertaining for what they are, and this one didn't disappoint, complete with the most effeminate auto salvage yard scene ever (go Troy!). ;-> I hate to admit it, but overall, I enjoyed the movie, and I know the girls loved it.

The rest of the day included some errands and just some rest. We're heading out tomorrow night to Boo at the Zoo, a zoo based Halloween event. They do these all over the place, and we thought we'd give the St. Louis Zoo version a try.

Saturday Update:

Today was definitely a low-key day, and not one of our best, but still, it can always be worse.

We basically hung out in the camper for most of the day, taking a bit of a break from sightseeing. Our plan was to go to the Boo at the Zoo event that night, combining a bit of fun with seeing the animals.

The girls did a bit of homework, and we as a family made a pretty difficult decision. We had originally decided to keep the girls out until the beginning of January and try to do some more catch up work when we got back. It became very apparent to all of us yesterday that doing this might be a bad idea, and would likely cause them to be even more behind. I think we've decided that some families just aren't cut out for homeschooling. So, we've decided that the girls will be returning to school on the Monday after we get back, the 10th of November. This is a difficult choice for all of us, knowing that the remainder of the year could likely be quite stressful playing catch up. It will likely require additional homework, weekend work, lost recess time, etc. However, we think the girls will do better in the classroom environment and catching up there instead of at home with us. We've written to, and are waiting for a return note from the teachers. We'll keep you advised how it goes.

With that hard decision out of the way, we made it out to the zoo, with the girls in costume. Needless to say, we were underwhelmed by what we saw when we got there. We soon learned that the only ones not participating in the event were the animals. The entire zoo was basically blocked off. So, no animals. The event was also geared for kids in the under 5 age range. The highlight of the evening was some little 3 year old dressed as the evil Spiderman. He came up to us and took his attack pose, we acted scared and he stayed in character. Very cute, but not necessarily worth $20. ;->

Sunday we'll be doing a majority of the sightseeing. We'll be seeing downtown St. Louis, the arch, and the St. Louis science museum. We're hoping for a bit of a step up from Saturday...

Sunday Update:

Today was a much better day. We slept in a bit, since we didn't really have to be in a hurry to get going. Then, we went over to the arch, which is just a couple of minutes from our campground. This is simply an engineering marvel. I looked up some info on it. It measures 630 feet high, and 630 feet wide at the base. The construction is a isosceles triangle, with equal sides. The base measures 54 feet and the top (peak) measures 17 feet. You can take an elevator up to the observation room, but we elected not to do that.

One interesting fact is that they built the legs independently and simultaneously. They had to be within 1/64 of an inch tolerance in order to meet at the top. At the time they were trying to connect the last piece, the sun had heated one leg and they wouldn't connect. They had to use a firetruck to spray the heated leg down and get it into place as it cooled. Firemen are awesome, eh? I just thought that was cool.

We finished the day at the St. Louis Science Center, another great science museum. They had lots of exhibits including human anatomy, computers, and the girls had a chance to build and program lego robots. This was their favorite part, and they really enjoyed it. Our reciprocal museum passes we bought at Museum of the Rockies have really paid off. We've been to 8 or 9 museums now for free after we bought the membership. Well worth it.

We're heading out to Chicago in the morning, and we'll be stopping at Abe Lincoln's home in Springfield on the way. We're looking forward to another great stop, and we're also all looking forward to finally being home...

Faith's blog:
Yesterday we went to the Arch. The arch marks where Lewis and Clark ended their expedition to find land in the western part of the U.S.A. Me and my sister, Kenzie, touched both ends of the arch. It was really cool! I loved it!

Kenzie's blog:
We got to go to the Arch. It was like an illusion. We also went to a really cool science museum. They had a project with Legos where you built a Lego robot and programmed it to knock over all the Legos first. I named my robot Rodney. It’s too bad you can’t take them home! It was fun!


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