TenHeartsToThreeParks

Today's main objective was the City Museum.   Our family has been here twice, but it's ever changing, so every experience is new!!  We arrived at the City Museum around noon and raring to go!!   Between the slides, buses hanging off of the side of buildings, and the obstacles.... we were fully entertained!!  As short as this blog as... that's about it.  ;)   If you haven't figured it out...we are pretty exhausted!!

We took our time moving across Nebraska, arriving in St. Louis around 6:00.   We did some last minute booking for our hotel and totally scored on an amazing hotel.   It's an older Sheraton, but has a unique chateau like setting.    We got three rooms, with mine and Steph's being on the ground level, and we were super excited to discover our rooms opened to adjoining patios.   The patios are open to a courtyard which overlook a creek and the pool.  It didn't take us long to pull out the Rummikub and enjoy the sunset.   Meanwhile, the kids wasted no time and were quick to get on swimsuits and in the pool. Before too long, everyone was wondering about dinner.   Thankfully, several restaurants adjoin to the hotel in a quaint outdoor area.   It was really lovely...   we mentioned more than once how thankful we were to end up at this hotel.   Tomorrow's agenda?   The City Museum!!

We woke up in Sidney, Nebraska, a charming small town.  Interestingly, there was a big sign at the gas station that said "You are Nowhere."  We decided to move on rather than explore because the water park in Grand Island, Nebraska was calling our name. When you're driving the great plains, a city named "Grand Island" is a curiosity.  That being said, the drive through Nebraska is much different than I thought it would be - different than the vast, beautiful, and picturesque S Dakota to the north and the equally vast, sparsely populated, and inhospitable Kansas to the south.  Nebraska had signs of life throughout the I-80 corridor, probably because this is the same corridor that the Oregon Trail and the pony express followed.  We saw the same South Platte, and Platte Rivers that the early travelers saw.  Because people have been traveling through this area for so long, many communities had a chance to spring up along the way, and unlike I-90 and I-70,...

We left Jackson Hole yesterday morning.  It's about a 24 drive from Nashville (with no stops which makes it about 32 hours for our family) which makes it seem closer to home.  I love Wyoming . . . it is chock full of beauty and history. We left the northwest corner of the state yesterday morning and after winding through the mountains surrounding the Jackson area, we went almost due south in a wide valley between two distant mountain ranges.  I ran into a family at a gas station in this remote area.  The daughter will be a sophomore at Vanderbilt . . . small world.  Soon afterward, we passed the Big Sandy River where the Oregon Trail had crossed at this point 150 years ago.  This was an area where mountain men once engaged in the fur trade and where they would gather together.  The local communities are aware and proud of this heritage.  We continued heading southward and after passing through the southwest portion of the state, we headed due ea...

We all knew today was going to be our last full day in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  To say that we loved our time here would be an understatement.  Honestly, we have had a pretty big bucket list of things we wanted to do here, so the pressure to empty the bucket was on today!  Going in to the day, we knew it was going to be a day to explore the mountain and to do some hiking. We started our day early and arrived for a breakfast at the base of the ski mountain.  We've discovered some of our favorite little spaces in Teton Village, so we knew where to find the "good stuff."  After breakfast, we made our way to the lift ticket area and before we knew it we were on the Teewinot chairlift.   This was the only open air chair lift available in Jackson Hole, but is almost soley used by mountain bikers.   After a quick ride up and down, we moved over to the gondola.  From other resorts, I recall gondolas carrying a lot of people, but the JH gondol...