We initially thought we'd start our week-end off at the zoo, but upon getting to Forest Park in the early afternoon, we soon discovered a long line of cars for the zoo and all the zoo reservations sold out for the day. We called an audible and discovered a new fun place to play in Forest Park...
Nature Playscape!
The kids had a good time playing around on the rocks, logs, trees, and fountains while Zach and I scrambled to secure a hotel reservation and determine a plan for the rest of the day. We decided to follow up the playscape with a trip to the City Museum. I had some anxiety while there, but the kids had fun crawling through tunnels, swinging on rope swings, and traversing all the climbing structures in the outdoor area. Briggs had a few tears about things being "too scary" or not wanting to do all the things his sisters did, but he did find a few things he was willing to try. Unfortunately, the little train ride that was his highlight the last time we were there was closed.
We rounded out our first day with dinner at our hotel followed by some swimming in the hotel pool.
After getting some sleep and eating breakfast at our hotel, we then headed out to do what we love to do in St. Louis...go to the zoo!
We spent the ENTIRE day enjoying the zoo. And by entire day, I truly mean 7.5 hours of zoo time. We saw all our favorite animals...
checked out the special dinosaur exhibit that they had going on...
rode the train a few times...
got front row seats for the sea lion show...
enjoyed a sweet treat...
and took advantage of more than a few rides on the carousel.
We made a quick stop at turtle park on our way back to our car before hitting the road for home after our long and thoroughly enjoyable zoo day.
We had a fun little trip to St. Louis. Although our first day didn't turn out quite like I had hoped, our zoo day more than made up for it. I mentioned to the kids that the St. Louis Zoo is just one of my happy places...and I think they all agreed!
