Day 28 – Possibly the highlight of the whole trip (for at least 3/5 of the family)

St. Louis

Today, right after breakfast, we set off on a 15-minute walk to the long-awaited City Museum.  This place really defies description, and I have to assume is unique in all the world.  It is not, as you might think by the name, some dry historical, educational kind of place.  Instead, it is a kid’s (or kid-at-heart’s) dream come true.  It is not, however, a place for the faint of heart or weak of stomach.  Or claustrophobic.  Or inflexible.

This place used to be a shoe factory.  It’s since been taken over (presumably by some kind of brilliant and crazy mad-scientist-type) and turned into the most eclectic “museum” you’ve ever seen.  Almost everything is constructed from found and salvaged materials.  There are no maps.

On the 11^th floor roof, you’ll find a school bus hanging off the corner (you can sit in the driver’s seat, actually off the edge of the building).  You can ride a Ferris wheel, which evidently has been

Outside of the school bus (look up)

Inside the school bus

 considerably souped up, since it goes about five times faster than any Ferris wheel I’ve ever been on, and gives you the distinct impression that you’re going to soar off the edge of the roof as you come down.  You can climb a 3-story cage tunnel up into the sky, then take a deep breath and plunge down the steep, fast slide underneath the tunnel.  You can climb and slide and swing and hop in various structures everywhere you look.

Looking down the barrel of this slide was
scary.  The bottom actually had a rough
surface to slow you down, but you couldn't
tell that by looking.

When you’re tired of the roof, you can go inside and take a 10-story spiral slide down to the bottom level.  The slide is inspired by the old spiral slide that shoes traveled down in the factory, and looks similar.  It’s inside this eerily lit industrial courtyard, and involves plunges into darkness and strange flickering lights.

Where Lanie emerged during one of her
 caving adventures

The slide will let you out into the cave.  This is a multi-level, dimly lit area full of tunnels, wire ladders, slides, and rock carvings.  A huge pipe organ resides above, playing creepy music.  Some of the tunnels are so small you have to crawl to get out, and your parental commitment will be tested when you have to follow your four-year-old into a dark hole, where you find the floor dropping out beneath you.  (Eventually, your four-year-old will crawl into a space you just can’t fit into, and you’ll give up and hope that she manages to find her way back to you at some point.)

Looking down upon the 10-story slide.
There was a TV screen at the top showing
the bottom, so you'd know when the
person ahead of you was off and you
could start down.

Heading back outside, you’ll find wire tunnels everywhere, spiraling up to the sky and leading high above the heads of those below.  Every now and then you’ll come across a slide hidden in the tunnel-work, and bravely plunge down it, unsure of where you’ll end up.  (If you follow your children, sooner or later you’ll find yourself fighting your way uphill in a tunnel that is really not designed for someone your size.)  And everywhere, there is elaborate and beautiful artwork built into everything.

An alternative to the stairs

There are still four other floors to explore.  Maybe you’ll see a circus act, or maybe you’ll crawl through the tunnels that underlie the circus bleachers.  You can play in a huge indoor skate park (but without skates), or view the world’s largest pencil or largest pair of underwear, or take a train ride through a creepy museum of neon signs and old carnival equipment.  (This part reminded me of our Scooby Doo Wii game, which is set in an old abandoned toy factory.)  You can see turtles and fish in the undersea area, which is covered with beautiful mosaics everywhere you look.  If you want to go from one floor to another, you can take the stairs – or you can find a Slinky-like coil of wire that lets you climb there, hanging over empty space.  And there is much, much more.  We were there for the entire day.

See those feet in the top left corner?  They are on a grate
that comes down from the roof far, far above.  I was very
glad when Lanie looked at the horizontal portion forty feet
up and decided no way, so I didn't have to follow her.

I still don’t think I’m doing this place justice.  Maybe you should look at the web site (http://www.citymuseum.org)  But really, that probably won’t help either.  You should just go there.  We’ll come with you.

In the caves

***

From Bob:

There was a lady sitting next to me down in the lower level of the caves and she told me her family has been to the City Museum about 20 times.  Her kids love it.  The family was from Akron.  Akron, she said, was about eight hours away from St. Louis.  I asked her if there wasn’t a City Museum in Cleveland or Cincinnati.  She said there wasn’t a place like this anywhere else.

                That’s about all I can say about the City Museum, except to add that is not a place where one asks, “Should I do this?”  The only question at the City Museum is, “Can I do this.”  Anything you can figure out you can do. 

Climbing across the ceiling to the tree house

The whole room was detailed mosaics
like this one

                Also, although it might not show up in the pictures, I went on the Ferris Wheel, the school bus, and the big mantis slide on the rooftop, and – although I still can’t believe it – I made it up the green tower to the airplane, then off the wing to the other airplane, and then over to the castle.  There were many other climbs and slides, but that was the hairiest.

                The Drury Inn provided us with three meals today – breakfast, including nice waffles, biscuits and sausage patties; lunch, which was mostly bananas and peanut butter taken from the breakfast spread; and dinner.  The seasoned taco meat and refried beans were just as good on a hot dog as they were on the nacho chips.

***

You never know where you're going to emerge from
 the caves

From Zoe:

We went to the City Museum.  It was awesome 

but very hard to describe.  First we went to the roof.  On the roof there was this big white thing going up.  It was like a tube with a slide underneath.  We went 

Under the bleachers

World's largest pencil

on it lots of times.  There were also stepping stones, a rope swing, a Ferris wheel, a slide where you could climb up the rope on one side and slide down the other, and a school bus hanging off the roof you could go in.  Near the rope swing was a ten story slide.  The slide went down to the caves.

The caves were my favorite part of the City Museum.  They are awesome.  They have places to climb and secret passages and no maps and are lit up creepily and dimly.  Mom let us wander the caves and explore them.  Next we went to a undersea area.  It was awesome.  Then we went to the huge outdoor structure to climb on.  It was awesome.  There were jets high in the air and wire tunnels and all kind of stuff.  We had lots of fun there.

Another scary slide.