We have now traveled 14 hours of the long 21 long stretch. Thus far we have been pretty terrible about documenting. I will say the children have done an exceptional job in the car. This part of the trip was the most concerning due to breaking Rule #1 – no driving over 5 hours – max.
The only planned activity for this 21 hour stint was to see the Arch. When we checked online, Google showed the Arch being open until 10 pm, so we were taking our sweet time getting there. I let my good friend Rachel know that that was what we were planning on doing when we arrived in STL, and she did a little research.
Well, it turns out the last ticket to the top of the Arch is sold at 4:50 pm, and our ETA per G-Maps was 4:46! This meant we would have 4 minutes to find parking downtown, buy tickets and get into the door. NOT GONNA HAPPEN!
So I quickly called my other good friend (and the person we were going to be staying with) Kelley. I informed her of the situation, and she immediately said she was “on it” and started to drive to the Arch to purchase the tickets.
Even though Kelley was on it, we still needed to make up some time. Jeffrey put on his super efficient driving hat and we arrived at 4:30. The kiddos were able to make it to the Arch and O was really into it.
After getting our Arch on, we headed over to Bush Stadium to check it out.
Then we feasted at my most favorite restaurant – Cunetto’s House of Pasta. We had a lovely dinner with Rachel, Kelley, Josh and the fam. The food was amazing, but we ate it all too quickly, so I only have one photo.
After our night out – we went to bed and started everything over again the next morning. We headed to Columbus, OH. We were excited to stop by Jeff’s cousin’s house. We had a mini-fam reunion with Beth, George, Denise, Dale, Katie and Jon. Dre and Owen had a great time hanging with their cousins Madison and Kenzie (happy birthday Kenzie!). It was a really fun night, filled with banter, ping-pong, pizza and relaxing. We were having so much fun, we didn’t even think about taking a pic – which really bummed me out once I remembered and we were back in the hotel.
Katie and Jon were great hosts, and we hope to hang with them again! Finally we headed back to the hotel and took the boys swimming. I would say the trip is off to a great start.
