Traveling from North Carolina to South Dakota part I

I've already written about our Lego adventure in November in an earlier post. What I haven't written about was our complete trip that started in western North Carolina with our final destination being the Black Hills of South Dakota which is my home state.

Here are three of the travelers ready to head out on a long trip! Of course I was behind the camera and I doubt any of you would care to see what I look like at 5 AM anyway.






We started out early that morning and it was rainy.

                                                                                

That Day we traveled through part of Tennessee, Kentucky, and the tip of Illinois before arriving in the state of Missouri.

Our plan was to make it to St. Louis MO by early afternoon and for the most part it was a smooth trip to MO. Before we left our neighbor gave us a small place mat map for the kids to play a licence plate game with (marking off the plates we found with a dry erase marker). We also brought along a really neat state magnetic puzzle that we had fun with.This was roadschooling at it's finest! On this trip Z~girl was able to learn all of the states locations on the maps along with their capitals.  OK mom and dad were also able to refresh their state capital knowledge too. A~man also has learned many on our long road trip.

I have to say even though I am not a city lovin' girl St. Louis is a beautiful city. Besides the Lego Summit we were able to go up in the arch which involves getting in this wee little pod type contraption. I was this <---> close to chickening out but I was so glad I didn't.

The view from the top at night was phenomenal!!








 
 
 
 
 
 
 
While on our journey we were able to keep up with our online schooling as we brought our laptop. Now I can hear some of you through the blogsphere saying "mean mom!" but I assure you it was minimal and mixed in with a whole lot of educational field trips there was not a complaint uttered. 
 
 

 
After going in the arch we went to the Museum of Westward Expansion which is under the arch. Next time we will plan for more time in the museum as we got there a half hour before it closed.
 
 

We left early the next morning to continue on our way and an hour out of St. Louis my husband discovered he had left his wedding ring and another ring in our hotel room. One worried phone call later we were reassured that they had found the rings and they then put them in the mail to return them safely to us. Thank goodness for honest people.

NEXT STOP.....KANSAS?? stay tuned.