Great Smokies Road Trip: Part Three (The End)

I'm finally to the last part of our trip.  I think I need to learn how to scale back a little - my trip posts always end up being more exhausting than the actual trips.

Charleston, West Virginia

After we left the Great Smokies, we headed to Charleston, West Virginia.

The next morning I tried to get a good shot of the kids enjoying the complimentary breakfast at the hotel (because in all seriousness, their very favorite thing on the whole road trip might have been the breakfasts at all the hotels). For some reason, though, Rachel and Elizabeth look like they are watching a horror show. Honestly, I have no idea what they are doing.

After breakfast we packed up and headed on our way. We loved driving in West Virginia - it's one of the prettiest states I've seen. The kids kept requesting to listen to John Denver's "Country Roads" over and over again while we drove.

We stopped and let everyone get out and play around by one of the rivers.

Rachel and Henry coloring in the car. Rachel figured out a neat system to keep her colored pencils organized (see them tucked neatly into her seatbelt?):

Which was good, because she wasn't messing around with her drawings. I scanned in a few from her notebook:

1) A girl sitting on her bed, with a bookshelf, a toy baby carriage, and lots of little toy people on the floor.

2) Possibly Rachel's dream room, with a toy phone, baby carriage, vanity/dresser, and of course, a fancy chandelier.

One of the highlights of West Virginia was going to the New River Gorge Bridge. It was a little out of our way, but worth the stop. I guess it is the 3rd largest arch bridge in the world, and the highest bridge you can drive across in America. After we drove across it, we stopped at the little visitor center and walked down to the overlook.  It was a pretty impressive view:

On the way back Henry insisted on walking up all 178 stairs by himself:

Every time he got to a little landing spot, he would shout out, "made it!". 

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Our next stop on the road trip was Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  This was not part of the original plan, but we ended up with an extra night to spend somewhere, and we decided that while we were in the area (sort of), it would be a fun place to stay.  Plus, it meant that the kids can now cross off Pennsylvania as one of the states they've been in.

Pittsburgh:


As neat as Pittsburgh is, it was not one of our smoothest stops.  We didn't have a hotel reservation, and finding one downtown was not as easy as we thought it would be.  Driving around downtown was a nightmare - there were random bridges everywhere, and the traffic system was just crazy.  We ended up spending a couple hours searching for a hotel.  The kids were great sports about it, but Daniel and I were frustrated that everyone had to be in the car for longer than we had planned. 

We finally left the city and found a great hotel in Monroeville, just outside of Pittsburgh.  After we checked in we had a really fun dinner at TGI Fridays, and then the older kids had a great time swimming back at the hotel, so it ended up okay.



Columbus, Ohio

The next morning we left Pennsylvania and entered Ohio.  We made a stop in Columbus to see the capitol building:


And eat lunch at the famous Thurman's Cafe (yes, another Man vs. Food stop):

Daniel and the boys decided to tackle the Thurman-ator.  It was pretty crazy:

They needed Rachel's help to finish it, but they did it:

Indianapolis, Indiana

After lunch we hit the road again and drove to Indiana.  That evening we checked into our hotel in downtown Indianapolis, and then headed out on a walk to explore the city.  Our hotel was right across the street from the Lucas Oil Stadium, where the Colts play football (Austin Collie!). 

We also saw the capitol building:

And ate dinner at an awesome mall in the middle of downtown.  The kids loved hanging out in this little atrium right above the street:

After dinner we were walking around and came across this huge war memorial tower.  Daniel, Tristan, and Oliver climbed all 320 steps to the top, but the rest of us just took the elevator.  We got some great views of the city from the top:

Posing by a cool sculpture in downtown Indianapolis:

After we had walked around for awhile, we headed back to the hotel to put Henry to bed and let the older kids go swimming.  I think Indianapolis was one of our favorite cities.

The next day was our last day before heading home.  Before driving to St. Louis, Missouri (where our hotel reservation was for the night), we drove south to Kentucky to make a stop in Louisville.

Louisville, Kentucky

We ate an early lunch at a crazy restaurant called Lynn's Paradise Cafe:

The whole parking lot was full of fun stuff for the kids to play around on:

This was my favorite picture because of Rachel's head not quite clearing the top of the potato, and Lizza peeking through the tomato's armhole:

 Tristan and Rachel wanted to pose by some of the food.  Rachel was really starting to get into the whole "make a dreadful face to show how big your lunch is" idea.  (Maybe that's what she was doing back in Charleston??)

After lunch we drove over to the Churchill Downs racetrack (where the Kentucky Derby is held) to see some horse races.  It was very exciting - I've never been to (or seen) a real horse race before.  I felt like I was in a Dick Francis book, so I kept my eyes open for any mysterious business going on.  (Just kidding.  If you've never read those books just ignore that comment).

The kids loved standing up in front right by the track to see all the action:

They had a race going every half hour.  We stayed and watched the first two races.  The kids liked trying to guess which horse was going to win (though no bets were made).  Rachel got a little depressed because she had seen a girl riding a white horse (her favorite) during warm-ups, and had picked her to win it all, but we never saw the white horse race.

Henry loved seeing all the horses warm-up and the first race, but he was too tired to make it through the second one.  Have I mentioned how much I love this kid?  He was so good the whole trip:

St. Louis, Missouri

After Louisville, we set off for St. Louis, Missouri. The main attraction for us there was the giant Gateway Arch. Our hotel was right across the street from it, so we had some great views.

I have to admit that before I read the Percy Jackson books I never knew that you could actually go inside the arch and ride up to the top.  Tristan and Oliver are big Percy fans, so they were super excited when we told them we were going to stay in St. Louis and we had tickets to go to the top of the arch - it was probably one of the most anticipated moments of the trip.

It was really interesting to find out how it all worked.  There is a visitor center underground under the center of the arch, and on each side there are 8 little capsules/shuttles that go up like a little train.  In each little shuttle there are five little seats - we fit our whole family into one so we could all go up together.

Here's Rachel waiting for take-off.  It really was a cool experience.  I had to concentrate on not feeling claustrophobic, though.

After the four-minute ride to the top, we got out and were able to walk around at the top of the arch and look out the windows.  They have it set up perfectly for kids to be able to perch on a little ledge and look down.  It really was crazy to see how high up we were (630 feet) and how tiny everything looked down below.

Tristan and Oliver decided that even though the arch doesn't go right over the Mississippi River, it would still probably be possible for Percy to land in it after he goes through the hole in the arch. 

Looking back up at the arch - you can see the tiny windows way up there that we were looking out of.

We all walked down to the Mississippi River and felt the water. 

Our kids could not get over the big field of wonderful grass underneath the arch (we don't really have that here in Texas, and it's been awhile since they've felt real grass).  They had so much fun running and falling all over the place and rolling down hills.

Instead of going right back to our hotel, we decided to walk a little bt around St. Louis.  Here's looking back at the arch:

The girls were really excited when we found these pink colored fountains.  I promise, that really is excitement on Lizza's face:

I adjusted the camera settings so the pink water would show up better, but I couldn't get Lizza to sit still, so she ended up looking like a ghost person in all of them:

Next we found a great waterfall/fountain that people were wading in, so we let the kids get in and get soaking wet.  At first Henry was content to just watch from his stroller, but that only lasted about 1 minute, and then he insisted on getting in, too.  He went absoutely crazy in the fountain - he kept laying down on his stomach and trying to swim around.  It was too dark to take pictures, but Daniel captured some of it with the video camera.  My favorite part is when Ollie thinks he is posing for pictures, and doesn't realize it's a video (It's around the 1:27 mark, for those of you who don't want to watch 2 minutes of my kids playing in the water).

 

It was pretty late when we finally got back to the hotel, but we let the oldest four go swimming anyways, just because it was our last night.  They were pretty worn out after that.  The girls didn't have their own pull-out bed at this hotel, so Tristan took the reclining chair, and these three just slept sideways on one of the beds.  It worked out great.

Back to Texas

The last day was our longest driving day.  It took us about 13 1/2 hours to get from St. Louis back to Pflugerville.  Thank goodness for awesome travelers.

Before we started our trip, Daniel put a few new songs on our ipod.  Somehow Eminem's "Not Afraid" became the theme song for our whole trip - seriously, we played it at the beginning of each day/driving segment to get pumped up for our next adventure.  Even Henry was requesting the "not afraid" song by the end.

I think I will always have fond memories of this trip whenever I hear Eminem now.

The end.

P.S.  I just want to say that Daniel actually gets all the credit for planning this fabulous trip - he's the one who thinks up all the exciting things our family does.  I can't wait until next year - he's already been studying the map on our kitchen table, mapping out one last grand finale road trip.  It's going to be crazy.