A Quick Stop at the Arch {St. Louis}

If you follow me on Instagram (@MomsGonnaSnap) then you have had a chance to see snapshots taken throughout our vacation. Now that we’re home, I have started going through the 2200+ (!!!) photos that we took on two cameras and my phone.  Brace up, there will be lots of vacation posts coming!!!



I think it’s funny how much we look forward to going on vacation, and also how much we look forward to coming home when the vacation is done.  If you read my last post, you know that we were on vacation this past week – we drove from Minnesota to Orlando!  Just in case geography is not your thing, that means we drove through 8 states for a total of 1,440 miles EACH WAY.  This was no small venture!  When we left Orlando, I was wishing I was Dorothy and could just click my heels 3 times and be home!  We experienced incredibly heavy “spring break” traffic (so the digital road signs told us) throughout Florida and Georgia on the way home.  In fact, at one point, we drove about 10 miles in 1.5 hours!  It was awful.

Since Anthony attends a year-round school, following a 45/15 calendar, he has 3 weeks off for spring break.  Hubby had to take some mandatory vacation days and my work schedule is somewhat flexible these days so we made a decision to go for it!  We decided to leave early on a Saturday morning, the day after Anthony was done with school for 3 weeks to spend a week in Florida and planned to leave Florida sometime in the afternoon on the following Saturday to start the drive back to Minnesota.

As I said in my last post, we ended up leaving around 4 in the morning, which actually worked out pretty good.  Anthony was able to fall back asleep for awhile as we started trekking across the country.  That morning we drove from Minnesota, through Iowa and down through Missouri to St. Louis – our timing was perfect to stop for lunch at the arch!  Since I was a kid, I have always thought the arch was pretty cool, so I was ready to share my excitement with Anthony.  We all needed to stretch our legs, so taking some time to walk around the arch was perfect.



It was a nice day, and unfortunately we were not the only ones who thought visiting the arch was a good idea.  When we got inside (under the arch) we were all ready to purchase tickets to take a ride to the top.  Then we found we would have to wait about 3 hours for a turn.  Ugh!  Waiting three hours on a day when we were planning to drive approximately 1000 miles was not an option.  Anthony was thrilled though – he was nervous about riding in the tram to the top of the arch and he really didn’t want to.  I have to admit, I was pretty disappointed, but there was nothing we could do about it.  We took a handful of pictures, made some sandwiches for lunch and hit the road!  In total, we stopped for about an hour before jumping back in the van and heading down the road.

Here are a few more pics from our stop in St. Louis…

Anthony raced to the stop of the steps.  I kept asking him to stop so I could tell him something (I don’t remember what, but it was probably for a picture) and he just rushed to the top, not letting us catch him.



I think he was pretty excited to be out of the car – I had to hang on to him so hubby could take this photo!






Our mini photographer took this next one for us!  We stood on a bench and he sat on the ground below us – he did pretty good!  The weird thing coming out of my head is my hand – in the first round of photos I had hair standing straight up – this helped with the hair, but it looks like I have an arm coming out of the side of my head…



A stranger saw our photo attempts (see above picture) and took pity on us.  On trips like this, we love nice strangers so we can get some family shots!







Maybe next time we go through St. Louis we’ll be able to take a trip to the top – I sure hope so!

It feels good to be home, now I just wish the Minnesota snow had melted while we were in Florida!!