Indiana/Kentucky Road Trip: Day 5

The fifth and final day of vacation started out early at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis.  This was the number one most recommended attraction that people mentioned when I asked for advice about our trip.  And it did not disappoint!  We stayed all. day. long. and most definitely could have spent at least another whole day in this amazing place.  The problem was, however, that we had super special hotel reservations for the final night of our trip and we wanted to get to the hotel to make sure we had maximum time to enjoy our special accommodations.

How could you not love this place when this is how you are greeted upon pulling up?

The dinos from the inside...

It was just our (actually, Henry's) luck that they had a Hot Wheels exhibit during our visit.  It could have not been more perfectly suited to Henry!

We loved this amazing ceiling at the museum and it was a nice way for Amelia to relax a little in between all of the chaos.  Henry, of course, stopped by for only a few minutes at a time.  The seat where she was relaxed slowly revolved so she could view a large part of the ceiling without ever getting up.

There were certainly many exhibits that matched well with Henry's interests, but Amelia had a blast too---especially when she found her buddy, Kit, on display!

That night we surprised the kids with a stay in an actual retired railroad car!  It was really pretty incredible, cramped, but incredible! 

This was the inside of our train car (before we junked it up with our things).  It was great fun for the kids and I was pretty excited too.  Each car is named after a famous person.  Just across the hall from ours, Amelia spotted the Amelia Earhart car!

After we had explored our train car  a bit, we decided to take a little walk in downtown Indianapolis--a complete paradise for tourists with plenty of restaurants and shops within walking distance in a relatively safe atmosphere.  Poor Henry fell asleep almost immediately since we stayed at the museum right through his normal afternoon nap time.

 

After a short nap and dinner we headed back to our hotel and swam at the pool before retiring for the night.  In the morning, we had one last chance for some hotel and train car photo ops before heading home to St. Louis.

 

 

This trip was just the right speed for our young family.  We took it very slow and broke up our busiest days with down days.  We stayed close to home so that we could bail at any time if needed.  We kept the drive times to under 4 hours. We planned ahead as best we could but were flexible when we needed to be.  Overall it was a pretty low stress, low cost vacation which was just right.  We are hoping that with more time and practice we can tackle longer, more complex trips, but this was a great first step and we made lots of great memories while seeing some new states along the way.  Win, win, win!