KS City Mansion and the City Museum

James and I spent the first two weeks of April in Kansas and took the opportunity to go to Kansas City and St. Louis for a couple days. We both enjoy traveling and touring WAY too much.

We stopped in KS City to see a couple sites on the way to St. Louis. One of those sites is this mansion house that was unfortunately closed when we were there. Someday, I plan to go walk through it. It's lovely on the outside!

This was a random road we passed in KS City. It reminded us of Brian Regan and his sketch on having a big name. (Click here to see that sketch.)

First thing we did in St. Louis was the City Museum. I HIGHLY recommend this for kids of all ages! This museum is basically a big jungle gym in adult size. You can see it on top of the building behind James.

This is the wall outside of the restrooms and it made me think of my jobs working for BYU cafeterias. These are metal containers used to hold silverware in restaurants. A large part of this "museum" was made using someone's junk. Cool, huh?

Here is the very thing you see in the jungle gym portion - a spring that disappears into the ceiling... You just climb up in this and crawl around in the hidden maze above the ceiling tiles. This might frighten me slightly if I were a parent, honestly. But, everyone seemed fine the whole time we were there.

I learned some things about myself while here. I learned that I can actually be claustrophobic. And it's a terrible feeling. Here I am inside this stony monster mouth and after taking this picture I suddenly had a gripping feeling of suffocating even though I was totally exposed to the air around me and nothing was wrong. I literally started freaking out and wriggled as fast as I could to get out of this thing! Although adults are welcome here, some areas are just too tight for comfort unless you're ten years old.

My favorite part was this 10 story slide!! You walk up an insane amount of stairs, have about 2.5 heart attacks on the way up, notice that several "slides" abruptly end in broken metal and hope that that's not the slide you end up on... and finally reach the top. The slide is a spiral and you go so fast it is literally impossible to stop yourself. In fact, the first time I rode it, I slid right out across the ground about 6 more feet past the landing mat. And people laughed at me.

Here we are sitting on a giant turtle's back. :)

And me being cross-eyed like a chameleon.

This was amazing! I learned here that I have a small fear of heights when there is only chicken wire holding me in the air... The object of this insanity is to start on the second floor and crawl through the wire spring/cage the curls around and around up to the third floor which is where I am in this picture. Fun, eh?

Another sample of the crazy wire cage. I didn't try this one. I'm a chicken... But James did!

This picture is kind of screwy. It's a sad testament of our camera dying a slow death.

The museum also had an aquarium where they had Doctor Fish! They are the fish that eat the dead skin off your hands or feet so they are often used as exotic exfoliating in high end spas. They tickled my hand but it was fun.

This museum was totally worth the money and travel. I would love to go back again especially since we didn't get to go to the rooftop that day. Click here for the website.