We decided to take the train to St. Louis. Although the travel time is roughly an hour longer, it's a much easier trip to make on a train when you have a baby. The ride on the cars was much smoother than I remember on my previous train ride. The seats were also much more comfortable. Kali was able to get up and move around all she wanted with two parents available to assist since we weren't driving. We'd take walks down the aisle and also walk down to the dining car for some snacks. Kali loved to walk down the aisle, turning to just about every person she passed to say 'Hi!' or 'Hey!'. Everyone in the car quickly grew accustom to her walking by.
The train that we rode on goes right along the Missouri river for a good portion of the trip. It was pretty impressive to see the river up close given the amount of flooding in the Midwest. Portions of the track were no more than 5-6 feet above the water. We saw lots of ruined fields and closed roads along the way. We also saw some small homes built next to the river on 10-12 foot columns to keep them above the water. Many of those homes were surrounded by water, but they often had a boat tied to the house for transportation purposes.
My friend Ted picked us up when we got to St. Louis. We drove to a restaurant to get some food for Kali and Mrs. Lime. After lunch, we went back to Ted's house to relax for a bit. Mrs. Lime and Kali took a nap and I hung out with Ted. We played a few video games to burn some time. I played a game called 'Hitman' which I hadn't played before. The main character is an assassin who can choose how to proceed through each of his missions. You can be stealthy and try to avoid detection or you can go in with guns blazing. I did one mission using mostly stealth, though I did the vast majority of my work with guns on auto-fire. The mafia boss in me just came busting out.
After the girls woke up from their nap, Ted drove us downtown to the new Busch Stadium for the Royals-Cardinals game. It's actually a very nice stadium that reminds me of Camden Yards in Baltimore. I later found out that the two stadiums share the same designer, which made perfect sense. The main difference was that Busch Stadium probably has better sight lines than Camden Yards. Otherwise, there wasn't a huge difference between the two stadiums.
The Cardinals were missing Albert Pujois, who is their star player. The game was great from Kali's perspective, as it only lasted around 2 hours and 20 minutes, which is very fast for a baseball game. Her normal bedtime is 8:00 PM, but she was still awake at 10:00 PM. We decided to make a side trip on the way home and go get some Ted Drewe's Custard. For the uninitiated, Ted Drewe's Custard is a big St. Louis hangout. We arrived to see 200-300 people crowded around a small ice cream stand with police directing traffic (on a Tuesday night!). We eventually found a spot and picked up some custard. Kali hung out with Cooper at the game and then played chase in the parking lot while we were eating custard. She managed to avoid falling and scuffing her knees, which appeared to be a minor miracle given the pace she was moving. We finally got home at 11:15 at night and Kali was amazingly still awake. But she went to sleep with only a quick 15 second cry once we got back to Ted's house.
We slept in until 10:00 AM the next morning. We decided to head over to the St. Louis Zoo. We wandered through the first section of the zoo and didn’t find much until the end where they had an animatronic dinosaur exhibit. Kali really liked that because all of the animals were near the trail and made lots of noise. We didn’t let her know that they weren’t really real and that the noises were coming from stereo speakers.
Later, we headed over to the Children’s Zoo. Kali really liked that area. She was able to get up close with all the animals. The petting area was her favorite. She brushed several of the goats.
We moved on to the next Children's Zoo exhibit. Kali pointed over at an area and said 'Cat!'. I looked over there and told her that it wasn't a cat. However, once we got over there, it turned out that she was close to being correct than I was. It was actually a Meerkat. Nothing like finding out your 16 month old daughter knows more about the animals than you do.
Kali and I headed to the Conservation Carousel for a quick ride. Kali got to ride the endangered Black Rhino and had a great time. I was glad to see that she did so well because she got scared the last time she rode a carousel.
We finished the day by going to the Sea Lion show. Kali nearly fell asleep at the start of the show, but we managed to keep her awake and she liked watching the sea lions move around and jump out of the water. The largest of the sea lions (Alex) weighed nearly 600 pounds and he was very protective of his food. One of the smaller ones (Rosie)tried to grab one of his fish treats and ended up getting bit by the big sea lion. You'll note in the picture below that Rosie retreated to the pool at the bottom of the picture to get away from Alex after his tantrum over the food.
We took the train back and Kali didn't sleep a wink despite the fact that we didn't get back until 9:50 PM. She stayed awake all the way back home and finally went to sleep around 10:30 PM. Must be difficult to go to sleep when you have so much fun packed into two days.
