Second stop- Missouri/Illinois, part 1- Sight Seeing

* Play song Route 66 with this post


** This stop had to be broken up into two posts since there were so many pictures! So first, this one is just dedicated to the sight seeing, pretty much restricted to Kansas City (MO), Columbia (MO) and of course St. Louis!

So, after we left Nebraska we headed toward Missouri to our destination on Old Historic Route 66 in Eureka. We had a couple reasons to stay here, including seeing another Ch18 family, the Wright/Zyducks and to see the area Steve served his LDS mission in for two years, over 11 years ago! 

Unfortunately we had to add over 2 hours to our driving time, due to flooding of the Missouri River, there were a lot of roads that lead to the bridges being closed! Took us all the way into Kansas, which means that we'll have been through 5 states in about 4 days (6 states total for the trip)! But, it was kind of nice since we weren't in any hurry and so we got to see a lot more on our road trip :)

Like this

A new LDS temple being built outside of Kansas City, MO. Saw another family from Utah while we stopped here too

And stopped in Columbia so we could drop $50 to pick up some medicine we I forgot at home

And got to see "The Zou"

But then we finally made it! And I'll tell ya, in the world of miserable heat, it's a whole other world here! Close to 100% humidity the first day we explored, which was when we were outside most of the day :P At least we saw a lot, and had fun for the most part!

 The church near the arch and the arch

We went underneath the arch so that we'd be able to get tickets to go up inside it, and they have a lot of cool stuff in there. Like a history museum

Ahhh, the dreaded "ankle chop"!! I mostly did it to be funny with Steve, because it's something we talk about all the time that you should never do!! Professional or not!

Then it was time to go in the arch... kind of pricey, but worth the experience to do it once. It was pretty cool being over 630 feet in the air and seeing everything! You have to ride a tram to the top, and it's pretty much a really tiny pod that they cram 5 people (in our case 6 with Em on my lap) into for a 4 minute ride.

At the top

Some views from the tiny windows

Emarie taking it all in

 Silly girl, always sticking that tongue out! Going to be funny to see what she does once it's clipped (which is happening on the 17th of August!)

A look at downtown St. Louis before our Riverboat ride on the Mississippi

On the riverboat

 The statue that's not supposed to be under water of the Louis and Clark expedition

 Pure awesome!

Em was one tired girl here!

 Very, very tired... and hot!

 Poor attempt at a family picture... it really was miserably hot, even the locals were complaining!

 The Riverboat we were just on

Last look at the arch as we ascended the 60+ stairs carrying Em, stroller and all!

So that's it for this part, next part will be the wonderful families we spent time with here and spots from Steve's mission!