For a while now, the concept of going to the City Museum in St. Louis has been floating around in our subconsciousnesses. Neither Fuzzy nor I can remember who first told us about it--I remember our friend Claire telling us about it, and we know some people who are getting married there later this year...but it just sort of started popping up in conversations here and there. So when I was considering buying the Radiohead tickets (there was like 1 day when I had convinced myself that I wasn't going to buy them), we decided to make a weekend out of it, and check out the museum the next day.
There was no way to prepare myself on what to expect. Nor is there really any way to comprehend what I experienced last Saturday.
The City Museum is barely a museum...it's actually more of an amusement-park-freak-show-extravaganza. It's filled with caves and climbing structures, holes and slides. Basically, if you can see it, you can go there. Something looks climbable? Climb it. Think you can fit in that hole? Crawl into it. Nothing is off limits (except in one of the 3 places I saw "do not enter" tape.) A third of the places are in pitch black darkness. There are slides everywhere. There are several floors indoors, an outdoor city, and a rooftop. There's a 10 story windy slide, half of which is in the dark. The place was packed with children (children have an advantage here--more places to crawl into), but there were plenty of adults and couples without children, so we didn't feel weird being there. (In fact, it is open til 1am on weekends, and after 5pm on Fri and Sat, you have to be at least 18 or have adult supervision.) It took me a little while to really get into it...Fuzzy just instantly jumped right in, but I wasn't so sure. In fact, a lot of the time, I felt like this:
I think the turning point for me was the big slide--we did it fairly early in our visit, and it was exhilarating!! I couldn't stop giggling for a long time. After that, we just sort of went hog wild and free, going anywhere that looked intriguing, and everything looked intriguing.
While crawling through the caves, we found this giant shaft. So we went in there. These photos are taken with flash--it was pitch black in the tube:
Here are some other photos of the indoors:
I dont know what this is, but I really liked it.
Here is a video of us going down the Monster Slide. The poles on the slide had art painted on them, and they spun, so you could rattle and spin them on the way down. Also, please note, in the beginning of the video, when I take off, to the left, there is a giant coil thing elevated, and you can see the legs of someone climbing in it.
And then the outside...that's a whole other experience.
Yes, you are seeing that right. There are people up in that coil thing.
Now, I am ok with heights. I sometimes even like them! What I can't handle, however, is being somewhere up high and then looking UP. So when we crossed this one bridge (that had a crawlspace underneath it--I looked down and there were a ton of kids crawling underneath where I was walking, all of us a few stories in the air--you can see this in the photo above) and got to the other side, I sort of reached my climbing limit. Fuzzy, however, is an ADVENTURER and loves climbing, so he wanted to tackle the coil climb. We parted ways, and I went into this huge iron bowl type thing to take photos.
Look at him go!
At this point, I was terrified, and so scared and nervous for Fuzzy. I had to sit on the bottom of the thing I was in, and wrap my arm around it to brace myself from thinking that I was falling. A little girl in the structure was scared--her friends had left her and she was crying--and a women was trying to help her. I felt so helpless--I was just as scared as the girl, and I wasn't even the one climbing. Look at him!
He was literally several stories directly above me. I wanted to puke.
He made it down the slide on the other end, and I cautiously made my way across the bridge again. Thankfully, this place has several bars, so we went and had some BBQ ribs and beer. All better! Before we left, Fuzzy said "I just really want to go up into that castle." Well of course--why wouldn't we? 
Fuzzy in the castle, with the chaos behind him.
We were there for about 4 hours, and probably could have stayed 4 more. I am so amazed by this place-I don't know how they don't have more injuries and I can't IMAGINE how expensive their liability insurance must be. The people of St. Louis are lucky to have this in their town. We can't wait to go back. 
