Day 5, St. Louis

The day started with a yummy breakfast. I love that hotels these days have these cool waffle makers that make it safe and easy for guest to make their own warm breakfast. We only had 4 hours of driving ahead of us. The drive was uneventful, Kyler did sleep for an hour and 20 min which made things a lot more manageable. We stopped for the day in St. Louis, we heard a lot of good things about the zoo and the arch so we planned to spend the afternoon looking around.

The Zoo is free, as long as you can find someplace to park, if not..it costs $11 to park. It was a little chilly outside, but the sun was out, and we were like the only ones there. Most of the time we were the only ones looking at the exhibits. It was kind of nice. When you enter they have this statue of the sea lions. Kyler loved it.

And then around the corner are the real sea lions, I totally thought it was another statue. They were just sunning themselves on the rock.

Kyler loved the Polar bear, it kept sticking it's head up and looking right at us. Everything seemed so close, it was nice not to have bars or glass.

The Penguin exhibit was the best. Man can those things swim, and they can stop on a dime. They were so fun to watch. The St. Louis Zoo has the largest penguin exhibit in the nation. I was watching one really closely and realized to soon I was to close, yup, I got drenched. Brian couldn't stop laughing.

The zoo was great. Many of the animals were on vacation. They take a lot of their animals to different zoos for the winter. But it was still fun to see the ones that were here and it was great that we were one of the few people there. Also, as Tiffany said, the penguin exhibit was great. It was the best I have ever seen. You can get close enough to touch them, if you dare to get bit. - Brian

Then we headed over to the St. Louis Arch. It was really impressive. We got there late so we didn't get to take the ride to the top, but that's ok. We enjoyed taking pictures. Here are our favorites.

Then we headed to our hotel in Illinois. It just happened to be close and a good price. And we got to add another state to our list.

Kyler now knows that when we enter a hotel lobby, somewhere are these fun carts that he gets to ride on. He had so much fun helping Daddy unload the car..yet again.

More family fun time! We headed for the pool. This was a really nice facility, probably the nicest we've stayed in. The pool wasn't real warm though, so we'd spend a few minutes in the hot tub and then play on the pool chairs. Kyler was SO good. He was an angel all day. I have to remember in the moments that he's a screaming terror, it's only because he doesn't know whats going on, and he really just wants to play.