EveryTrail - Find the best Hiking near St. Louis, Missouri
Distance - 318 miles
Time - 6 hours 15 minutes
I was very reluctant to leave St. Louis - I feel like there's still so much to see! After the kids had breakfast and the adults had coffee, we all went our separate ways for the day. I packed up the car, stopped at MoKaBe's Coffeehouse up the street for a quick breakfast, posted some postcards, and got on the road towards Chicago. The drive was fairly uneventful besides a stretch of construction traffic, and I got to the Chicago suburbs around 3pm despite the unexpected delay.
I haven't seen my cousin Allison and her twin 5 year olds (Gale and Scott) in a few years, and it's been even longer since I've seen her husband Jeff, so it was a treat to finally get to catch up with everyone! Allie and I played with the kids for a little bit and finished prepping one of her amazing apple pies, then took them (the kids, not the pie) to Scott's "ninja" class where he got to run around a bit and Gale made friends with another girl her age who was also waiting for a brother in the class. Scott got his 2 month badge so Jeff took him to choose a toy at the store while the girls stopped by the grocery store and went home to start dinner (and bake the pie!)
The next day we had a couple of options but decided to spend the day relaxing and getting pampered at the Waldorf! Jeff bravely took the kids for their busy day of tennis lessons, Kumon, and Halloween Hoopla at the park while Allie and I went down to Chicago. We started out with coffee at Intelligentsia, a wonderful local chain with lattes that were so rich it was almost like drinking breakfast in a mug! We also tried a morning bun, sort of a pinwheel-type pastry with orange zest brown sugar rolled up between the flaky layers. Knowing that once you're in the spa they let you hang around for pretty much as long as you want, we made manicure reservations and then spent several hours in the relaxation room chatting, reading magazines, drinking vanilla-bean flavored water, and eating the never ending supply of almonds and dried fruit. We ended up with gorgeous nails and feeling pretty sleepy that evening after all that relaxing!
We both had been craving pizza so Allie ordered from a local restaurant while I got the kids in the bath after Jeff left for a family birthday party. Scott is gluten-free, making pizza a little difficult usually, but this restaurant has come up with a pretty creative solution - make the crust out of sausage! It was a little 6 inch kids pizza, with a very thin layer of sausage that they'd turned up at the edges in order to hold the sauce and cheese on top - I'm not sure if they cooked the "crust" before adding the toppings or if the baking process was enough to cook the meat. It was definitely a hit with Scott!
After pizza we had promised the kids a movie night, so they chose "Brave" (we might have tipped them towards the movie we wanted to watch just a little) and we settled in to watch - a fantastic end to a very fun day.
Goodbye St. Louis arch
Illinois fields
Artwork that the kids made for me, including a heart to take to "Uncle Richie"
We found a butterfly on the sidewalk and moved him out of the way
I'm starting to think that Gnome might have a coffee problem...
Cool statue across from the coffee place
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