Another disaser averted, June 16-17

Hi everyone, Sorry we haven't posted in a while but we forgot to factor in editing time. It's the morning of Friday, June 24 and we are in Mt. Carmel, Utah about to head out to Zion National Park for a day trip. We are staying in a beautiful cottage surrounded by horses, goats, and chickens. We hope to catch you up on all our travels so far in the next couple of days so stay tuned. The following is a post from Indiana and Missouri (more pics forthcoming). Oh, and by the way, I LOST MY CELL PHONE in Mesa Verde National Park 2 days ago. Call Greg's phone if you need us. :) -Margaret

Some photos from our quick rest area stop before arriving in Indianapolis....



City Cafe in downtown Indianapolis is far from a dump. It's a cute breakfast and lunch spot across from City Hall, a monument, and a park. It had been a LONG night of driving and we were ready for a big breakfast. While we waited for the place to open their doors at 7am, the kids ran around the park across the street.


After some corn flake encrusted French toast, whole grain oats, and pancakes we headed to America's gateway to the West where we had reservations at the Hyatt Archview.


St Louis, Missouri
The hotel was true to its name. Our room on the 9th floor had a perfect view of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial aka “the Arch”.

We were all jazzed to rent a four person, four wheeled cycle but were told that the Mississippi was over her bank and the bike path was closed. We planned an early afternoon trip to the top of the Arch and went up to our room to relax. We lingered in the room longer than expected and began to hear multiple sirens from the street. Jonah sat at the window and called out all the emergency vehicles he saw pulling into the Arch entrance. When we walked over to the Arch, about 8 emergency vehicles were parked outside and the tram to the top of the Arch was out of service. National Park Service Rangers were walking around in a panic giving evasive answers about what happened and when the tram would re-open. We found out later from the news that we had just missed being on the tram that lost power and stalled 400 feet up on the north side for the 3 hours!

We walked down to the bank of the Mississippi where we saw some log jams and the kids got their feet wet in the powerful river. We needed dinner soon so Greg found an authentic Memphis-style barbecue place called Pappy's Smokehouse a few miles from the hotel so we hopped in a cab with Hussein, a nice Arab man who tried to add $5 to our trip as an “extra charge” until I called him on it. Hussein was so impressed with my haggling, he took even more off the price! Greg and I agreed the pork ribs were excellent but North Carolina Q still comes out on top when it comes to pulled pork. Jonah's favorite was the signature fried corn and Liliana loved her pork sandwich and sweet tea.

We woke up early the next morning to make our second attempt to get to the top of the Arch before leaving St. Louis. We got our tickets, saw a short film about the making of the Arch and then climbed into a tiny capsule that would take us to the top of the arch, 630 feet in the air.