Day Four -- St. Louis to Topeka - with a stop in Jefferson City, MO

We woke up at the lovely Westin St. Louis, directly across from the St. Louis Cardinals ball park. There's no free breakfast at fancy hotels so we headed out to check out the arch and of course, found a Starbucks!

Since we had Sadie with us, we had to split up our trips to the top so Emily and I went first while Lance, Henry and Sadie hung out on the ground 630 feet below. The pod to the top was a little claustrophobic at first but turned out ok in the end. It was tiny in there but there was a window to look at the stairs as you went up. Once on top, there is plenty of space to walk around and look out all the windows.

Here's Emily and I in the pod.

That is Henry, Lance and Sadie taken fromt the top of the arch. We called down and told them to look up!

Here's Henry on the top at exactly the 630 foot mark!

Emily, Sadie and I hanging out down below.

The arch is really cool -- a very interesting structure. Taller than the Washington Monument.

So we had to get a little artsy -- the kids had a ball taking this photo.

Lance shot this cool photo into the sun! It was really lovely day!

But we had to keep going. We had about 2 1/2 hours to go to get to our next capitol city -- Jefferson City, MO. This was a really cool detour. The capitol building is really pretty and they have a lot of statues and parks dedicated to Thomas Jefferson (because he was the president who sent Lewis and Clark up the Missouri River looking for trade/communication routes). We had fun walking around the capitol and then having dinner at a cafe sitting out on the sidewalk of the town.

This is a life size Lewis and Clark statue and we decided to be explorers like them and try to blend in. :)

Emily and Henry at the big huge Jefferson statue in front of the capitol building.

Another family photo at another state capitol!