Sites of STL

It's not uncommon for people to shorten Salt Lake City with SLC. Here, people use STL instead of writing out St. Louis.

Koen loves the park. Whether humid or not outside, he loves to play out there as long as he can.

We visited the science center. It was interesting, though probably a little more fun for kids older than Koen. Science Center Admission: Free Science Center Parking: $9 (It seems several of the free places around here earn their money with high parking lot prices. The Zoo's parking lot charges $12! So our suggestion if you visit here... park along the side of the road and walk. So far we've had good success with this.)

The Science Center has a bridge the crosses the freeway. There are a few spots that you can look through the floor and watch cars drive underneath. They also have small posts that you can point towards cars driving by and it will show you their speed.
This is the amount of money that would be needed in order to send that single carton of milk up into space. I'm sorry I forgot to picture the actual dollar amount... but that is still a lot!
This is how much it would cost for me to go up into space. Jon and Koen can go together for $1,710,000.

We live very close to the Merrimac River and it has flooded. We thankfully live far away/high enough we are not concerned about being flooded ourselves. But if you look closely, you can see that the soccer and baseball field below is very much flooded. It has since gone down and I'm seeing long grasses poking through the water now. But it is still very well flooded. There was a time that this field was dry several weeks ago.

We visited the World's Bird Sanctuary. I apologize for not picturing any birds from there. Koen enjoyed the birds as he always does, but this time he really enjoyed the dirt and rocks the most!
Just across the road from the bird sanctuary, there is an Elk park. These are the only elk we saw. They were enjoying the hot, humid day relaxing in the water. I was wishing that I was doing the same thing at that time too. We also saw a few buffalo and a turtles.

Forest park is a large and beautiful park in St. Louis. It is larger than Central Park in New York. A large hot spot for cooling off this place:

Notice what the sign reads?

We also joined in the refreshing fun.

Our water play was a spur of the moment idea, so Koen did not have any extra pants. He had to leave like this instead:

There is a sculpture park not too far that has Family Fun Days in June. Every Friday night this month they are showing a movie after a live band plays. We enjoyed watching Madagascar there this last Friday. We saw our first fireflies of the season that night too! Thankfully, it wasn't extremely humid that evening either! I'll have to go back just to get pictures of some of the sculptures to share with you.

Last Saturday, we visited Grant's Farm. Admission: Free Parking: $11 (We parked along a trail that goes by the farm. It was a longer walk, but nice, and definitely worth saving $11!) You get a "train" ride through a good portion the park, and then you can walk through another part to see several kinds of animals. It was a lot of fun.

I had never seen a horse with blue eyes before! It was pretty, but sort of weird looking at the same time.

We were amazed by the difference in size between the Clydesdale and Horse.
You could see and pet all sorts of animals. One girl fed a camel. You can feed baby goats. There are several other animals there too. Elephants, lemurs, iguana, llamas, all sorts of birds, and more. It was like a small zoo!
This sprayed bridge is a comforting refresher on a hot day.

I wanted to share some videos with you, but I do not seem to have luck with getting them to upload. :( St. Louis is a ton of fun and we are enjoying the new scenery. We hope all is well for everyone!