Hot Cakes at Forest Park (Cakes 62-70)

Whew! We're melting! We're melting! We saw ten cakes today, and the heat index is 104! We wanted to visit the cakes that we figured are in danger of imminent vandalism due to Fair St. Louis being held at Forest Park this year, rather than the usual Gateway Arch location. Amy, Lori, Kate, Jack, and Emma met us at 9:30 AM at the World's Fair Pavilion. My GPS led me astray, and I was a little late, but we got there! Forest Park can be hard to navigate, and this is the second time that my GPS messed up a cake location. I really need to print the map the way that Tom does. He's an excellent navigator. Anyway, we saw lots of terrific cakes, toured the 250/250 exhibit at the History Museum, and visited the zoo before ending our day at 3:15 PM. It was a very busy caking day!

First stop, the World's Fair Pavilion. We found out that this was NOT a part of the 1904 World's Fair, but was built in 1909 with money raised from the fair.

Look at the five cousins with their cake shirts! There's lots of good cousin bonding going on with the cake questing!

The Jewel Box...I've been to weddings here. I love the water lilies!

(Emma put on the shorts I brought for her today. I made them at her request, to go with her cake shirt.)

Steinberg Skating Rink, the largest outdoor ice skating rink in the midwest, as it looks in the middle of summer:

The Steinberg cake is decorated for the Great Forest Park Balloon Race that is always held on my birthday weekend. The Balloon Glow is on Friday night, followed by the Race on Saturday. It's a very big event...and we're usually so wiped out by the start of school that we skip it. I think we've been to the Balloon Glow twice, but we've never made the race. Maybe this year! (Of course, I say that every year.)

I love hot air balloons, and I love the detail on this cake!

The Muny cake was the next one on our list...but we already have this one, so I didn't count it. I was just happy to get a picture of the back side of it.

The Downey Divas:

 One of my favorite pictures of The Fabulous Five:

"Forest Park Forever" is the name of the next cake, which was located at the Forest Park Visitor's Center. I'd never been in here before. There's a cafe, nice restrooms, and good free stuff, like maps and coloring books!

The Missouri History Museum has an excellent exhibit for St. Louis's birthday celebration! It's called 250 in 250. From their website:

St. Louis turns 250 in 2014! How do you tell 250 years of St. Louis history in one exhibit? The Missouri History Museum does it through the stories of 50 people, 50 places, 50 images, 50 moments, and 50 objects. We can't give you a complete picture of St. Louis' 250 years of history, but through these 250 snapshots, we will give you and engaging look at the richness, diversity, and complexity of the place you call home. 

This was a wonderful exhibit. I think Amy, Lori, and I got about as much as we could from it, considering there was a lot of child-wrangling going on. It's something that adults could really take their time with and enjoy.

There was a chalk mural that was incredible. The kids liked adding their touches to the pillar nearby! (There are more pictures of this on Flickr.)

I don't think I remembered that Build-A-Bear started in St. Louis. The first store was at the Galleria!

The next stop was the Grand Basin/Fair St. Louis cake. You can see how workers are busy getting ready for this weekend's celebration. There are tents all around the art museum, and they're getting this field ready for concerts. (This cake is on borrowed time; I'm glad we got here today! There will be thousands of people here this weekend.)

The Art Museum is closed on Mondays. I have to say that Amy and I were glad. There's only so much you can do in one day!

Lunch time! We headed to the zoo, and enjoyed our lunch while planning what to do next!

AAAAAHH! Refreshing water mist!

The train ride took a LOT of time this afternoon, but we thought it would be a fun way to get to the South zoo entrance to find the cake. Chloe, Holly, and I were wishing that we could get FastPasses!

We got the kids zooveniers for being such good sports in the incredible heat. They really held up well, and we're very proud of The Fab Five!

Heading to the Children's Zoo fountain...this was the train ride back from seeing the zoo cake. Sweet little Emma was really getting tired:

But all five of the kids perked right up when they arrived at the fountains!

Amy and I agreed that we were really ambitious with our Forest Park planning today. There are so many cakes in this area, with so many things to do! And it was HOT HOT HOT! Chloe and Holly and I agreed to head straight home. But as I turned on Tamm Avenue, Chloe yelled, "CAAAAAAAAAKE!" She spotted the cake at Turtle Park, and said, "Mom, we've got to stop!" So we took one last cake picture for the day, and spent a few minutes climbing on the big turtles. 

We had originally planned to add two more cakes to this group, and that was after we decided to move the Science Center and Planetarium cakes to another day. There's just no way to get the whole Forest Park area in one day, unless you do nothing fun...and what's the fun of that? Gotta have fun experiences to keep the cake-seeking crew happy!

Chloe, Holly, and I may do an easy cake or two tomorrow...but not many. Our next adventure will be when The Fab Five meet again for more caking on Wednesday!