Caterpillar Visitors Center
110 SW Washington Street- Peoria, IL 61602
- (309) 675-0606
- Website
Once we left St. Louis, the plan was to head back to Peoria, IL for a couple of nights. J and I met in Peoria eleven years ago and moved away in 2008. Neither of us had been back since.
Some things change and some things stay the same. One of the big things that has changed since we left is the riverfront. When I moved to Peoria in 2002, there was a huge block of land a block off the river that was abandoned. It was known then as the “Sears Block” because the long abandoned building was a Sears store before they moved out to the Northwoods Mall. The block sat empty for many years while money was raised to build The Peoria Riverfront Museum. As a companion to that museum, Caterpillar pledged to build a visitors center on the east side of that property across from the parking garage of their World Headquarters.
The hold up with Caterpillar was they said from the time they announced the project they weren’t going to build if the Riverfront Museum wasn’t going to get built. It took almost 15 years to fund and build the Museum and while it was a hot topic while we were there, it was almost four years after we left that the block was finally redeveloped.
Our first night in Peoria was straight to the hotel and to bed. It wasn’t really late, but we were tired and we had plans to meet a friend for lunch at noon the next day. Our plan was to visit the museum before that.
Without the use of GPS, I found my way back to downtown Peoria for the first time over eight years. The museum block is definitely not what I remember (duh, it was a hole in the ground with a chain link fence around it when I left.) Read more…
D’Arcy’s Pint
661 W. Stanford AvenueOur vacation in St. Louis was only a couple of days. Two to be exact. From there, we moved on to Peoria, IL for a couple nights. J and I met in Peoria almost 11 years ago and we haven’t been back since we moved to Michigan in 2008.
I had really hoped to make one more stop in St. Louis for a meal. One of my goals when we planned the St. Louis trip was to stop at Schlafly Brewing, but that wasn’t in the cards. We stopped for frozen custard instead at Ted Drewes then got on the road.
The good news is, I always have a back up plan.
I’ve blogged a little bit about regional foods in the past and it doesn’t get more regional than the horseshoe sandwich in Central Illinois. No one outside of this area has ever seen or head of, let alone eaten, a horseshoe. I feel sorry for those people. Horshoe’s are one of the great heart attack inducing foods in the country.
A quick history lesson. The horseshoe is an open-faced sandwich invented in Springfield, IL. The basic structure is thick bread, meat (historically hamburger patties), fries, and a cheese sauce. Yes, fries on top of the meat and the whole dang thing is covered in that cheese sauce.
The original restaurant is no longer in Springfield, but there are a couple of great options when it comes to finding a horseshoe.
One of those options is D’Arcy’s Pint on Stanford Avenue on the south side of Springfield just about a mile west of BL-55. We were coming from the south, so the quickest way to get there was to get off of I-55 at the Business Loop and follow that up to Stanford. It’s not a stop that’s right off the highway, but it is a detour worth making.
Ted Drewes Frozen Custard – Chippewa
6726 Chippewa StreetOne last stop before we left St. Louis.
We had just spent four hours at the St. Louis Zoo and were starting to make our trek north. The vacation continued in Peoria, IL for a couple of days, but there was one last thing I wanted to do and I knew no one would have a problem with it.
If you’re going to St. Louis, you have to stop at Ted Drewes. On a hot day that was spent mostly outside, frozen custard was exactly what we needed before we started the next leg of our journey.
Ted Drewes Frozen Custard has two locations in St. Louis. The older of the two is on Grand Avenue and used to be their flagship location. The one we stopped at was on old Route 66…now known as Chippewa Street. This location, on the southwest side of the city, opened in 1941. At the time, this was the fourth Ted Drewes with the original location actually being in St. Petersburg, Florida. The first St. Louis location was on Natural Bridge Avenue. Both of those locations closed before 1960. Read more…
St. Louis Zoo
1 Government Drive- St. Louis, MO 63110
- (314) 781-0900
- Website
The big plans, other than my trip to a baseball game, while in St. Louis was to hit the zoo. That’s typically our plan in any city we travel to, but that’s a big part of the reason we made this a family trip.
We woke up pretty early on Sunday morning. The plan was to order room service for breakfast, take our showers, then check out of the hotel and head to the zoo. Amazingly, all of that actually happened. We ordered breakfast right at 6:30 when room service began. We took turn taking showers and packing up our stuff. I lugged the bags down to the car while J and L were getting ready then we were out the door at just a little after 8:30.
The St. Louis Zoo is in Forest Park on the west side of St. Louis. It was about a 15 minute drive from downtown due to construction on I-64. The zoo is right off the highway at the Hampton Road exit. You have to weave through the park a little bit, but there is signage that will lead you in the right direction.
Currently, there are two parking lots at the zoo. One on the north side. One on the south. I read somewhere that this will be changing in the next couple of years due to expansion. The easiest one to get to from the Interstate is the south side so that’s where we ended up.
Admission to the zoo is free but parking is $15 and paid at the entrance to the lot. We were still pretty early so we got a really close parking spot near the pedestrian bridge that goes over Wells Drive and takes you to the entrance of the zoo.
Imo’s Pizza – Hilton St. Louis at the Ballpark
1 S. Broadway StreetI sort of left B in a predicament. My dinner plans were set as I was meeting “The Guys” at Fox Sports Midwest Live! for dinner, but what was J going to do for herself and L. B had fallen asleep in the hotel room not long after I left, so the choices were down to room service and pizza delivery.
It wasn’t hard to find a good pizza place in downtown St. Louis. As L and I were swimming on the rooftop pool before I left to go to the Cardinals game, I noticed several people coming out to the pool deck with boxes of pizza. I meant to tell J about it assuming they delivered to the hotel, but I forgot…and she found the same place anyway.
Imo’s Pizza is pretty popular in the St. Louis area. They actually have 90 stores in Missouri, Illinois, and Kansas, but the headquarters are in unincorporated St. Louis County. The chain is popular for “St. Louis Style” pizza which is a type of pizza that both J and I can get on board with.
There are a couple options for Imo’s downtown, but I’m pretty sure J called the one on 4th Street a few blocks from the Crowne Plaza Downtown which is where we were staying. The closest one to us was actually the Broadway Street location but I don’t believe they do delivery due to the fact that restaurant is on the ground level of the Hilton St. Louis at the Ballpark. I’m kind of going to mash up these two locations in to one blog post just due to the fact that I took pictures of the one at the Hilton because it was on my way back to the hotel and I assumed at the time (wrongly apparently) that was the one she ordered from. That small restaurant sits on the Market Street side of the hotel building about halfway between Broadway Street and South 7th. The dining room consists of a few tables inside a long, narrow public space after you pass an order counter as you enter the door. There’s also some outdoor dining which was being used by several people after the game. Read more…
Busch Stadium
700 Clark Avenue- St. Louis, MO 63102
- (314) 345-9600
- Website
So, here’s the whole reason we took a little vacation to the St. Louis area. My buddy with partial season tickets to the White Sox picked up a ten game package with the Cardinals this year. We still wanted to do our yearly trip to U.S. Cellular Field, but my dad, my brother and I haven’t seen Busch, so we decided to add that game to our agenda as well.
My dad and brother drove down with our friend K, but I drove down on Friday with my family. We did some family things on Saturday before I met them at the ballpark. I got a hotel downtown at the Crowne Plaza so I walked. The guys I was meeting drove in and my buddy K knew the best place to park in the area to get back on the highway. I have no idea where they were at, but parking at Busch Stadium looks to be all around the park. There are surface lots plus a number of ramps in the area that offer much cheaper parking than the $30 I saw walking around the stadium. I know the ramp that I parked in at the hotel was charging only $5 if you were willing to walk about ten minutes to the stadium.
The current incarnation of Busch Stadium is actually the third stadium in St. Louis to bear that name. The original was Sportsman’s Park which took on the Busch name in 1953. Busch Memorial Stadium preceded the current Busch Stadium on nearly the same piece of land in downtown St. Louis. The first two Busch Stadium’s were named after team owner Gussie Busch. This one is actually a corporate name taken from Anheuser-Busch.
The new stadium opened in 2006 as one of the retro ballparks. Like so many other downtown ballparks, including Comerica Park, the view from the seats is pretty amazing. Looking out over the center field wall is part of the skyline towards the Mississippi River and, of course, the Gateway Arch. When you look at the old park and new park side-by-side, the new park looks so much smaller but yet it holds only about 6,000 less people. Heck, even the night we were there, there was almost 45,000 people in the park. Read more…
Fox Sports Midwest Live!
601 Clark Avenue #103We didn’t just decide to go to St. Louis. There was actually a plan in place far in advance of this becoming a family trip.
This actually all started when the group I go to a baseball game with every summer decided to expand to two, maybe three games instead of the usual one White Sox game.
My buddy from high school, we’ll call him K for this post, is a Cubs fan…with a partial season ticket package to the White Sox…and now the Cardinals. We grew up about 60 miles from Chicago which is where my parents and brother still live. K lives much closer to St. Louis and his wife is a big Cards fan. The opportunity to buy 10 games as part of someone else’s season ticket package came up and he couldn’t pass it up. The four of us (K, my dad, my brother, and I) always do a White Sox game. This year, we decided to add on a Cardinals game.
J and I decided to make the trip to St. Louis a family trip. I got a killer hotel deal for Friday and Saturday night, so I was going to meet everyone else down there. After our trip to The Magic House, I had to take L swimming. The pool was on the roof of a 30 story building overlooking the Arch…we HAD to go swimming.
My dad, brother, and K got to town about 3:30 for a 6:00. In Chicago, we tailgate…hard. We pick up wings and drink a few beers before heading in to the stadium. You can’t tailgate in St. Louis. The reason…well, they built an entertainment complex and want you to drink their beer instead of bringing your own.
Ballpark Village is actually a pretty great thing. There are a number of restaurants including a Howl at Moon, Budweiser Brew House, Drunken Fish, and Cardinals Nation to name a few. For some reason, my group chose none of those and instead chose something completely different. Read more…
The Magic House, St. Louis Children’s Museum
516 S. Kirkwood Road- Kirkwood, MO 63122
- (314) 822-8900
- Website
What to do in an unfamiliar city? Why, reach out to friends that live there of course!
I sort of had our trip to St. Louis planned out a few weeks in advance. My family took a couple of vacations there when I was in Middle and High School. I knew there were some things I wanted to do and some things I didn’t. That still didn’t stop me from reaching out to friends who either live there or grew up there.
One of the things I never would have found was our Saturday entertainment. The weather was kind of iffy so we didn’t want to be outside. The City Museum was an option, but a friend of ours suggested something that would be even better for kids.
The Magic House, St. Louis Children’s Museum is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a house full of magic and wonder for the kids. With L, we’ve been to a number of Children’s Museums. We know it’s always a safe bet when traveling and L always has so much fun.
The Magic House is located in the St. Louis suburb of Kirkwood. It’s about 15 minutes southwest of the city center down Interstate 44.
We chose to head to Kirkwood for lunch first and then head over to the museum. Our route took us to the northeast side of the museum which is where the main parking lot is. On weekends, it looks like there is also parking at Nipher Middle School next door. If that lot is open for Magic House parking, that’s actually the place to park. The entrance to the museum is on the northwest corner of the building in what can be considered the front of the original house. We had to walk all the way around the building to get in from where we parked in the very last row in the main parking as far away from the door as possible. Read more…
Kirkwood Station Brewing Company
105 E. Jefferson AvenueOur first full day in St. Louis got off to a little bit of a late start. Just as we were getting ready to leave our hotel, the manager called. The previous night, the front desk screwed up at check-in. They gave my room away to someone with the same last name. They put us in to a two bedroom suite for the night, but that room was booked (and cost a helluva lot more than what I paid for two King beds) so we needed to move to a different room. The manager came up with a cart himself and helped us move, but it still set us back on our limited time for the day.
Our plan was initially to go to the St. Louis Zoo, but weather was a factor so we decided to stay indoors. We chose to go to The Magic House in Kirkwood instead.
We missed breakfast and J was getting hungry. We decided to head out to Kirkwood and eat in the area. Turns out, there was a brewery less than half a mile from the museum.
Kirkwood Station Brewing Company is in downtown Kirkwood on Jefferson Avenue right off of Historic Route 66. The building is pretty large and has it’s own parking lot to the east of the building, but there’s also a public lot right next to that and street parking nearby. Read more…
DESTIHL Restaurant & Brew Works
318 S. Towanda AvenueSo…our first family vacation as a family of four. It’s really the first time we’ve traveled for a real vacation with L. We’ve done Saugatuck for an extended weekend a few times, but never a long drive somewhere.
My dad, brother, and my best friend from high school get together every year for a White Sox game. My friend lives closer to St. Louis now and since his wife is a Cardinal fan, he got in on a season ticket plan giving him ten games a year. He asked if we wanted to add a Cardinals game to our summer this year and we were all up for it.
I figured if I was going to drive that far, I may as well take the family and make a vacation out of it. I got a helluva deal at the Crowne Plaza Downtown in St. Louis so the plan was for us to hang out Saturday, I’d go to the game, then we’d find something to do on Sunday as well.
The drive from Kalamazoo to St. Louis is pretty long…even if you’re not a 4-year or 6-month-old. The plan was to stop somewhere for dinner along the way. B fell asleep so we kept pushing our dinner and gas break back. As we neared the Bloomington/Normal, Illinois, B started waking up and I had a place in mind that I really wanted to stop at.
DESTIHL Restaurant & Brew Works isn’t too far off I-55 in the small central Illinois college town of Normal. The restaurant is on Towanda Road inside the Shoppes at College Hills shopping complex. This is a brewery that’s been around since J and I lived in the area 8 years ago. At that time, craft beer was nowhere near as popular as it is now and while we did eat there, I didn’t have much interest in the beer…I just heard the food was delicious.
We pulled in to Normal around 4:00 and found our way to the restaurant from the Veterans Parkway entrance at The Shoppes. DESTIHL sits near the back of the shopping center near the Towanda Avenue entrance. Read more…
SW Michigan Dining 