The Spirit of St. Louis

This week was atypical for a few reasons.  

1.  Missouri is misery when it's hot.

2.  All efforts to stay out of the sun had to be made.

3.  Heat + humidity = 😢

Okay, I guess it was only one reason.  But seriously, folks.  This heat/humidity thing is no joke. I know a lot of the southern states experience miserable summers, but this was our first taste of this type of weather.  Jeff said the weather reports were forecasting record highs at the beginning of the week and I was like, "Yeah, but it's not like we'll be sitting out in the sun all day."  I didn't guess that we would be INSIDE and still too hot to move, or that the kids would only be able to stand being outside for 10 minutes before having to retreat inside.

Eight in the morning and hot, so Jax figured out a way to cool off.

We all moderated one another, making sure nobody was doing anything that could create extra heat.  Jeff and the kids pleaded with me several times, "You're making it hot in here by zipping around working!  Sit down!"

Jordan is always down for anything water related.  

(Especially if it includes blasting her brother!)

I wasn't about to do any cooking inside, but had already made my menu and done the shopping for it. So on the first day here, the kids and I marched all our cooking equipment outside!  There are plug-ins in the compartment under the RV, so we set up the Instant Pot, the double induction stove, and the griddle, and that's where I made our breakfasts and dinners.  I felt somewhat conspicuous making spaghetti and squash in my jerry-rigged outdoor kitchen, but it had to be done!  It helped so much in keeping the RV as cool as possible.

Made full-on dinner from this set-up all week.  I texted Sarah P. to tell her how hot I was, standing out there cooking in what felt like a furnace.  It made me feel better, so I guess it really is true that Missouri loves company.  😂

The view from my "kitchen."

An uninvited dinner guest showed up and started yelling at me for food.  So rude.

We spent a good portion of this week reading inside. Meg got through the last of her extras for the year and I started reading her books for next year.

I decided that we needed to get out for some sightseeing, but only to places that I knew would have great air conditioning.  We visited the history museum, the art museum, got frozen custard, did our grocery shopping, and checked out the amazing historical houses and beautiful parks.  We were blissfully cool for most of the day, and got to see some really great things!

We were surprised to find that Missouri is another state that is exceedingly green.  (Or at least the parts of it that we saw.)  Jeff and I were talking about how, as Oregonians, visitors always remark on how green Oregon is.  So we kind of developed the idea that other places must not be very green.  But thus far on our journey, we have found northern Utah, Kansas, and Missouri to also be very green!  Different kinds of green, but lots and lots of it.  The whole drive from Kansas to Missouri was green as far as the eye could see.  Traveling is dispelling a lot of the preconceived ideas and assumptions that we had about things.

The Missouri History Museum has an enormous Civil Rights exhibit right now, with live performances and many rooms of displays about St. Louis' involvement in the movement.  We just finished up our school year with big study of the Civil Rights Movement, so this was a perfect end cap.

Ye olden vacuum.

St. Louis is famous for a lot of things.  Among them are:

Lewis & Clark's expedition, which began in St. Louis (and ended in Oregon)

Charles Lindbergh's continuous flight to Paris in 1927
The 1904 World's Fair
Civil Rights leaders and events

The Arch

The St. Louis Bread Company (known to the rest of the country as Panera)

Really good frozen custard.  Oh my.

Unlike most cities, St. Louis' main attractions are free.  The places we visited were free, and the gardens are free, too.  I'm also told that the zoo is free, which is said to be one of the best in the nation.  The kids decided that they don't want to visit any more places that include animal tourism, so we won't see that one.  But these are huge, historical, beautifully maintained, awesome attractions!  We were very impressed!

There was a hill that needed to be rolled down.  I remember doing this with my cousin when I was a kid.  The girls just shook their heads and sighed, "Jackson..."

Alexander and Bucephalus in front of the St. Louis Art Museum

This was a fancy-schmancy art museum, filled with amazing pieces that were just unbelievably interesting to see.  I didn't take many pictures, but it was cool to be close to so many famous pieces of art.  The only bad thing was that we feel a little out of place in fancy art museums.  We are totally working on our accents and pinkie-raises and studying the royal rules of conduct.  Trying to get there, so maybe one day.

Like a kid in a candy store with all this artwork to study.

Later in the week, the kids and I had a much less pleasant experience.  We decided to visit City Museum and Central Library, which are in another part of St. Louis.  We should have stayed home.  On the way there, we passed some rough looking areas.  There were big brick homes all around that had obviously once been gorgeous, but are now neglected and ransacked.  We parked in one of the museum parking lots and noticed a police officer talking to some people that had shown up.  I walked over to the officer to ask him about the parking and he said, "Do you have anything valuable in your vehicle?"  I told him I didn't, but asked if it was safe to park there.  He said, "Not really, no."

It's probably important to this story to add that St. Louis is the 2nd most dangerous city in the U.S.  It's between Detroit (1st) and Oakland (3rd) for violent crimes.

  I asked if the gated place across the street was safer and he said, "Much, much, much, safer."  I called Jeff, who suggested that we go into the safer parking area and on to the museum, so we did.  When we walked around the corner to the museum, our faces fell.  Two and a half million people were running all over that place, screaming and hollering to one another.  Every adult looked stressed-out and sweaty, though the kids seemed to be having a blast.  The museum flows from indoor to outdoor, with structures crossing over into both areas.  From outside, it looks a bit like a giant hamster habitat.  You know the ones with all the tubes weaving in and around the structure?  It's like that except with more open and artistic tubes.

As I stood there, trying to take it all in, I glanced up at the ticket counter and saw that it would be $48 for us to join the perspiring crowd in the museum of mayhem.  Jordan and Meg looked pleadingly at me, like, "Please don't make us go in there."

So we left.  We had been given a coupon for a new pizza place when we entered the parking area, so we went there and had lunch just around the corner from the museum.  It was great pizza at a great price. We all took a minute to decide what we wanted to do next and agreed that we disliked being in this part of the city so much that we wanted to skip everything else on the list and leave.  It wasn't just that the museum was a no-go.  It was that the area was yucky and dirty and kinda unsafe feeling.  So we came back to the RV, but not before the pizza we were bringing home for Jeff fell into a pile on our filthy truck floor.  It was not our best day.  Or our best week.

In fact, I'm gonna' go ahead and say that St. Louis is our least favorite city so far.  That's a shame because it does have some really great things, but the bad just outweighs the good for us.  We were so excited to move on to our next stop.  And what a stop it is proving to be!  Can't wait to show you!