Missouri Trip - Day 3

Day 3

(March 7)

Dad works for a company called Northrop Grumman and works out of Fort Leavenworth, so we went to visit him and look around (We spent time in Leavenworth!)

My stupid camera ate through all of its batteries before I could get pictures of all the cool stuff in the museum (full of carriages, horses, and other stuff I can't remember...see why I needed a camera!)

But it was pretty neat - living on the east coast, there's a lot about the mid-west that I don't know, so it was certainly a learning experience.

This is the pathway that many settlers used to get to the Missouri River, which used to be right there, and it's awesome to stand there and just imagine all of the thousands of early Americans that traveled there many years ago.

Buffalo Soldier

Fort Leavenworth - the prison

Playing with the fake mustache we got from the thing-a-ma-thing at the Chinese Restaurant (which was FANTASTIC!!!)

This was the funniest thing in the world to watch - the squirrel wouldn't leave the bird feeder alone and it was so stinkin' cute! He fell a few times, but he always got back up and kept on trying. Lessons for life, right?

Fortunes from the cookies at the Chinese Restaurant - I found those first two amusing.

Well that's day 3! Pretty fun - minus trying to fit 6 people (1 in a car seat) in a 5 seater car!

More pictures on our Shutterfly Page.

Missouri Trip - Day 2

DAY 2 (March 6):

Now that we were in Kansas City and rested (mostly) we spent some good family time. 

Our first (and only) stop was:

We took a little tour of the Liberty Jail, which was really cool - I didn't know too much about it beforehand.

It looks so small!

Sorry for the fuzziness, but I thought that this picture showed the walls and the basement really well.

I always love replicas of the Golden Plates

 Most of the rest of the time was spent just hanging out so I don't have a whole lot more to blog about...

But day two was a success!

We did take more pictures from around the jail, I have them on our Shutterfly Photo Album.

Missouri Trip - Day 1

Just thinking about blogging about the entire trip to Missouri makes me panic. I took 1200+ pictures! Granted, some (a lot) of them were pictures taken by my 4 year old niece and won't be making it into the blog or the scrapbook, but regardless, that's a lot to go through! Plus, that's just a lot of information for one blog post.
So. The plan is to break it up by day. I don't like when people do that, and I've never had an instance when I needed to do it too, but now I have a reason, and I'm going to do it and I no longer blame other people for doing it!
So. Here we go.
Day 1 (March 5):
The journey

{I just wanted to include this picture from when I went down to NC to pick up Beau & Isabella before we officially started our trip because I think it's amazing. I have no idea why there is a stuffed lion there, but I found it hilarious!}

So, in terms of state line pictures, I need you to keep an open mind!
A couple of them were taken at different points in the trip - like this one :)

 So, we left Buena Vista at around...9:00 AM

Brandon took Deadpool along again (see Boston trip pictures)

First state line to cross:

West Virginia!

The only thing I didn't like about West Virginia was that there was a bridge that pretty much went from one mountain top to another and I about had a panic attack. I never would have imagined I would react that way! But...next time I think I'll opt to either be asleep during that section or go around it.

Next up:

I think this was the first time I've driven through Kentucky. Too bad it was raining and I 

couldn't really enjoy it!

Next:

a stop at Big Boy (and a few jokes about local Kentucky people by Beau and Brandon that made 

me afraid that they would all gang up on us and kill us).

After Kentucky:

For SURE the first time I've been in Indiana - Brandon used to live in Indianapolis, though

By this point it was about 7:00 PM and we'd been in the car for 10 hours (10 hours!) and there were still 3 states to go! (through Indiana, through Illinois and then to the other side of Missouri)

Just so you know - I was crankier than Isabella :)

She did have her DVD player, after all

Well, only 2 more state lines to cross....

What, can't see it? Well, you try and take a picture of the state line in a moving vehicle at night!
That does say Illinois, by-the-way.

FINALLY!

{Vision Goggles: we actually crossed into Missouri at around 11 PM, this picture was taken
on the return trip -more on THAT later-}

So...St. Louis, MO is right on the border between IL and MO, so the state line sign was in the city as we crossed over the bridge over the Mississippi River, and we weren't able to get that picture, which actually bums me out, but you know, I got a picture, so I'm good :) I'm so strange about getting state line signs (noticed yet?). In addition...I was the one driving in St. Louis and it was a NIGHTMARE. I have an extremely hard time keeping my calm at night in a city that I travel often, but throw in the fact that I've never been there before and it was terrible! I had to literally peel my fingers off of the steering wheel as we drove out of the city.  Ugh.

Well, St. Louis is on the east side of the state and we were headed to the west side...so there were 4 more hours to go... But we eventually got to Mom and Dad's place at around 3 AM (2 AM local time).
{Uh, in case you weren't counting, that's 18 hours}

Next up:

Day 2! (naturally)

P.S. More pictures on our Shutterfly page.