Focht Family Blog

After the zoo we drove to the Gateway Arch. Parking was fun. Apparently people line their cars 3 or 4 deep on the edge of the Mississippi as a parking lot. We were afraid that when we left that we would be blocked in so we parked on an outside edge. Here are Samantha and Timmy at the edge of the Mississippi River. Samantha and Nathan both touched the river…

Here is a view of the Arch as we were walking towards it…

Here is Samantha and Timmy “touching” the Arch…

Here is the view looking up as we were going in. It is pretty amazing when you look up and realize that you will soon be standing at the little windows….

Once we were inside Timmy started getting scared about going to the top. I have to say I wasn’t too sure about it either when I saw the tiny pods that was supposed to be our ride to the top. I would guess that with our society expanding that there are a few people that can’t get into the pods. Here is a shot of the kids in a pod that was at the ticket counter. If Nathan wasn’t in the middle seat he had to keep his head down to avoid bumping the ceiling. All 6 of us were in one of these pods…

Once at the top Timmy was happier. We looked out the window facing the RV Park and we were able to point out our campsites….

Here is a picture of the kids sitting up by one of the windows…

And here are views from both sides of the Arch….

After the Arch we went back to the RV to eat dinner and wait for the fireworks. At 9:00 the children’s fireworks went off at First Night across the town and we could see a few of them between the buildings. However, they do not have fireworks at the Arch on New Year’s Eve. I guess that is only on the Fourth of July, so at midnight we saw a few between the buildings from First Night but that was it. Oh well! :)

On New Year’s Eve we decided we would go to the arch and maybe one other place. We went out and ran some errands. We got mom some propane and went to the post office. Then Nathan went to meet with a customer that is in St Louis, D’Italia. While Nathan was in his meeting I called around and found out that the zoo closed at 3:00 but the arch was open until 6:00, so when his meeting was over we headed to the zoo. It is listed under my reciprocity list but it is free all year to anyone. A lot of the animals were in and towards the end of our visit more were taken in so that their areas could be cleaned for closing.

Here is the Sun Bear. I was surprised that when I got home and looked at the picture that the bear looks like it has blue eyes…

They had a lot of large cats but most of them are in cages and I hate having to look at pictures with bars in front of them. The lions were in a pit so that I could zoom in on them without having to have bars in the picture. Here is the lioness and the lion…

The lion was watching a man that was walking by us. It was the handler and it was dinner time. On our way to some of the indoor animals, the kids found a statue of some kind of bull. I took a picture of them but Josh refused to believe that he was in the picture so I had to take another picture of him by himself…

Indoors we found birds, monkeys, and snakes. Here is a picture of the kids by the lemurs. The lemurs were all curled up together by the window…

One of the last animals we saw on our way out of the zoo was the camel. He was being called in but he waited for a couple of pictures before listening…

Well… we feel stupid. Since we are in St Louis, we decided to get together for dinner with one of my mom’s friends, Jane Barnard. She teaches math at Armstrong. I always love getting to see Jane. She is one of the nicest people I have ever met. We went to Zia’s in The Hill section of St Louis. Our reservations were at 5:30 and we got there at 5:30 and the hostess told us we were an hour early!! Considering Samantha and I just did a lesson on time zones you would think one of us would realize that we crossed the line from Eastern to Central! :) Here is a picture of Jane with mom and the kids…

These are pictures of sites #506 and #508. You can see the arch in both pictures…

Things I like: It has a great view of the arch so we should have a good view of New Year’s Eve fireworks. They are open year round and have full hookups with laundry and playground. We are going to check today to see if we can use the hotel’s pool. You also get $5 for the driver and $5 for the navigator to use at the casino.

Things I don’t like: the trains get a bit noisy and if it is a big train you can actually feel the RV vibrating.

The kids woke up to six presents each from Santa…

They also had 3 gifts each from mom and dad and a gift from Aunt Chris under the tree…

They had a lot of fun opening presents…

After presents the kids played with their new toys while I cooked dinner…

Dinner was difficult to make with a small oven but I managed to make a turkey breast, mashed potatoes, stuffing, sauteed green beans, corn pudding, and biscuits. We were supposed to have rolls but I didn’t take them out of the freezer in time for them to rise so Nathan found some biscuits at a gas station. Of course the corn pudding wasn’t in the oven long enough either so the rolls and the corn pudding were saved for dinner with leftovers.

After lunch we went to see Bedtime Stories at the movies. It was a very cute movie. When we came home the kids wanted to play Guess Who I Am…