Niagara Falls - Winter 2008

Story coming soon....

Road Trip 2008 - Gateway Arch

Our next stop on the way home was a visit to the Gateway Arch and Jefferson National Expansion Memorial National park in St. Louis, MO.


This memorial was amazingly tall! Much bigger than I expected in fact you could see it for miles when we first entered St. Louis from the west. We would have liked to have visited it during the evening but we arrived quite late in St. Louis to begin with.

Getting There & Parking

We found getting there a bit confusing. We ended up over the Mississippi and into a what look like a bad part of Illinois before our GPS corrected us and got us back on another bridge over to St. Louis (the picture above is from the Illinois side). When we had finally arrived, we had a car carrier top on our roof so parking in the garage was out of the question! Parking there cost about $6. We followed signs for the RV parking but that wasn't clearly marked either. We finally found parking in front of the arch.

Visitor Center

The main visitor center is located underground just below the Arch Structure. We arrived at 845AM and it was about 15 degrees outside. The entrance to the arch is located underground. The doors opened at 9AM (so we had to wait outside in the bunker). Security is very tight. Expect to go through metal detectors and have your bags check similar to the airport.

The area includes a large open lobby, huge museum, gift shop, old fashion store (to get coffee), and two movie theaters. This is run by the National Park Service and even have a junior rangers program which the kids were able to go through the museum, answer questions, and earn their Junior Ranger path.

For tickets there are several options. We choose to take a ride to the top and watch the Lewis and Clark movie. There is another movie about the making of the arch.


At the Top

Riding up to the top you take a small tram of 4 to 5 cars. Each car fits about 4 to 5 people and takes a few minutes to get to the top. Our family fit fine in one car. You get some amazing views of St. Louis out of small windows from the top of the arch on one side and some other views of the Mississippi and Illinois from the other side.

Pictures will be here.


Lewis & Clark movie

The Lewis & Clark movie was AMAZING! The 45 minute movie gave an accurate historical account of how President Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis & Clark and crew to explore the land newly aquired from the Louisanna Purchase. It gave an account of new animals including the Prarie Dog and how the Native American woman Sacagawea.

Speeding....

*** BUMP -- due to comments ***

Late this past Saturday evening at Danforth Bay, I was walking the dogs with my daughter near my site and out of nowhere a speeding car turned the corner, swerved, and came very close to hitting us. The driver then proceeded to rush up the hill going well over the posted speed limit of 7MPH. We were a little taken back but AOK.

A few minutes later the same car rushed down the hill! I yelled "SLOW DOWN" with absolutely no reaction but fortunatley our favorite DBCR security guard was turning the corner and went chasing after the young driver and later gave him a lecture and lesson on how dangerous it is to drive in a campground with that is nearly full.

I later found out that Danforth Bay may be putting in NEW speed bumps but they may be delayed the grading job was unsatisifactory to the campground and since then the excess water from the severe storms has caused many of the roads to be in repair.

We have noticed from our site a number of "speeders". It is really concerning because we have 1 small child and other older children that are allowed to roam the park. With the campground now filled with LOTS kids running around, people on bicycles, walkers, etc. I have become more cautious when driving my car to my site or driving my golf cart around and obey the posted speed limit rules
It you are on vacation then SLOW DOWN on everything. I learned this on Ossipee Lake Road where I nearly escaped a speeding ticket (going 53 in a 30 MPH zone). The Freedom cops target this area. I've learned to SLOW down and enjoy the scenery and great weoods

Fall Road Trip 08 - T-REX (Kansas City) review

Review of T-REX Restaurant

On Saturday December 6th we left the OKC Memorial and headed north on I35 (with hundreds of Oklahoma University Sooners fans heading north passing us at peaceful 75 to 80MPH for a game against Kansas City). Our next planned destination stop was to visit the T-Rex Cafe in Kansas City, KS.

Driving through Oklahoma and Kansas was very scenic. The land was mainly flat, many small oil drilling rigs, large farmland. The beautiful untouched prairies at the Flint Hills was simpy amazing. Wichita (the largest Kansas city) seemed no bigger than Nashua or Salem NH to me. If you blinked you might of missed it!

T-REX

Landy Restuarants, the same fine folks that bring you the themed Rainforest Cafe and the Aquarium restuarant also bring this very cool and exciting experience of dining with the dinosaurs and other sea and land creatures. If you love those places chances are you are going to love T-REX as well!

Atomosphere:

The atomosphere, experience, thrill, curosity, or whatever you want to call it is the main reason to visit T-Rex. We made a 100+ mile detour on the way home to have this dining experience (which we heard about at our recent Aquarium visit). The front of the building is amazing with life size dinosaurs statues and "pre-historic rock". Inside just about every dinosaur creature (fully skinned of course ;->) you can think about comes to life at some point. On two floors, T-REX has 7 different theme dining rooms so your dining experience is sure to be different if you visit often. There are aquariums, creepy-crawly things on the walls, and even a "meteor shower" every 1/2 hour.

Check out my pictures to see how this restuarant is themed.

http://good-times.webshots.com/album/569571323QcmUkQ

Grade: A++

Food:

We ordered quesadillas for an appetizer and sodas. For dinner my wife and I had a thin crust tomato sauce pizza with sausage, onions. The boys had a plain cheese pizza and my youngest daughter had the alfredo noodle sauce kids meal. The quesadillas were good (not the best I've had) but the pizza was only mediocre to put it politely. Well food is not the main reason to come here and we could have ordered some more of the expensive items on the menu. Perhaps higher quality???

Grade: C+

Service:

Unfortunatley the service during our visit was horrible. It was the 1st time I've left less than a 15% tip in a long time. We had to wait over 15 minutes to get a table and they had plenty of seating as the resturant was only 1/2 full and upstairs was mainly empty. It was a good time to snap some photos. The waitress was even worse as it took forever to get our food and when I asked for a drink refill it didn't arrive until the end of the meal. I ended up sitting at my table waiting for the waitress to return my credit card while my family shopped in the gift shop. This restuarant was staffed mainly by teenagers who in my opinion had very little experience. Quite a difference from the great service we got at the other Landry restaurant, the Aquarium in Nashville

Grade: D

Shopping

Great shopping area with lots of souvieners (no postcards though :-<). My wife let my youngest son "build-a-dino" sponsored by Build-A-Bear.

Overall we had a great time. The only problem I have with these "Theme-Restuarants" is that I wish they would provide some higher quality lower priced items on the menu

Winter Cuddling....

Winter camping can be cold! We have been bundling up with the doggies in our beds on cold nights to keep them warm (vs. their crates). They learned and cuddled up together for a nap this afternoon on their warm and cozy dog bed.

Happy New Year!

Happy "Camping" New Year

Happy New Year!

Yay -- 2009!



I know 2008 was a difficult and not a very good year for a lot of people. I hope 2009 will be better for everyone. 2008 was the year of super high gas prices, bailouts, recession, tornados and wild weather, and a new president. For us, overall this year had its share of disappoinments as well but for the most part there was also many blessings.



As for camping with this last trip we have now camped every month of the year and on every major holiday! For holidays this year alone we added Easter, Halloween, Christmas, and New Years Eve.



We look forward to what God has in store for us in 2009!



Again, Happy New Year Everyone!