Day 21: St Louis

The days where we drive and do work/school are long, especially when we have to keep stopping so we can have connectivity for meetings. I know we are causing more burden on the teachers, as I hear the boys telling them about our connectivity troubles (they love to tell their class about it). I wish we could do this trip without others feeling any impact. We had visions of me driving while everyone worked, but we’re having to stop to have more reliable connections.

There are definitely some perks with traveling east. In the Central Time Zone, school starts at 10:50, giving us the chance for a morning family activity. Today we had big plans, so we left the campground just after sunrise, our earliest departure in a long time.

We were heading to the big city of St. Louis. Reviews online shared scary stories of RVs getting broken into, so Rob volunteered to stay back in the RV while the rest of us went up in the Gateway Arch.

Luck was on our side in so many ways today. We hit the big city, and it was super quiet on the streets. We even found free street parking (5 spots in a row) with a view of Busch Stadium out our windshield. We arrived with lots of time to spare thanks to this awesome parking find, so Rob took the boys for a walk around the stadium.

When they got back we traded and I headed out with the boys to see the arch. They have a scheduled system thanks to COVID, but this worked out really well for us. There was no waiting in line and at the top of the arch there were only 11 of us (including 5 kids). At the top they gave us 10 minutes to check out the view, which was the perfect amount of time since each group got their own four windows with views of both sides that we could easily go back and forth between. Apparently pre-COVID you had to wait and kind of push your way through the mass of people to a window.

We learned the structure is made of steel triangles stacked on top of each other. Here is a picture of the boys next to a side to show you a size perceptive.

After the brief walk through the museum and a history lesson from our guide, we were on our way up the arch.

We got back just in time for the boys’ morning school calls, and Rob took off for a run through the park. We still can’t believe how amazing all of the pieces fell together to give us so many experiences in such a short time in St. Louis.

We ended the day in a really nice state park: South Marcum Campground. The biggest downside was that our site was the most slanted one we have experienced. Even after using all our leveling blocks, our RV wouldn’t level. The best we could do was about a 3-degree tilt, which feels worse than it sounds like. We ended up flipping the boys around in their beds for the night so their heads were above their feet.