Gateway to the West

After we ate breakfast at IHOP we needed to reorganize the car and this cut into our time in St. Louis. So we drove by the Gateway Arch and headed to Grant’s Farm. Now the thing that I was really excited was seeing President Grant’s House and learning more about him. We drove into the park and paid our $11 for parking. This is a great deal and I saw a lot of mom’s taking their children there. If I lived in the area it would probably be a outing for us often. Before we got onto the tram that takes you around the farm I wanted to use the restroom and headed in the direction of the sign. I was still a bit tired from the night before and almost headed into the tram pathway.
On the trolly we learned that Grant’s father-in-law owned a brewery and they were the start of Anhiemer - Bucsh. The farm was opened when the present owner of Bucsh, because his quests found it fascinating and he thought that others would as well. They have an extensive collection of animals. We saw ducks, geese, deer, bison, zebra, texas longhorns, kangaroo, lemurs, giant tortoise, scarlet macaw, camel, goats, elephants, and a rare deer that no one in our family can remember the name of. The dear is on the critical extinction list and all of the ones that are left are in captivities. They did also have a bald eagle that we missed. One of the cool features of Grant’s Farm was that you could feed a baby goat.
Each of the kids got a bottle and was let into the pen. Bryce feed five goats and kept walking backwards because the goats continued to walk into him as he feed them. Blake had his own troubles as he was feeding. One goat butted him with his horns repetitively to get some of the milk and other goats tried to eat his shorts. Joe hung out with Ryleigh and let her pick the goat that she would feed. She picked what could easily be the smallest goat in the pen. As she feed her goat Joe was constantly having to push the other goats away. He had his work cut out for him. I enjoyed watching it because he did such a great job of protecting his daughter and helping her achieve what she wanted. No matter how small this is the reason that I was on this trip. To watch moments just like this.
Unfortunately, Joe was leaving in just a few hours and we were to head on our own. The weather was following us and we had to upgrade to a cabin once again. At this point I just upgraded our entire trip home with cabins except one that was not possible and left the ones going home for further consideration. On the way to the airport we saw a White Castle burger and decided to try these as we had never had them before. I will say that it wasn’t our cup of tea; Because it was a burger. All the same we will not be heading back. After lunch we headed to the airport and they had a really cool feature. They had pull through spots for dropping people off. I have to say that although it would not work at SeaTac it was really cool and I really liked it.
For the remainder of the day the kids and I drove to Louisville, KY. This was a fairly long drive and by the time we got in it was time to take showers and head to bed. This time though it would be for another day of straight driving.