Sometimes it’s nice to be told what to do, so I’m going to come right out and say it: plan a trip to St. Louis, Missouri sooner rather than later.

When the girls were still in school, we skipped town for a few days and headed to St. Louis. I love that it’s within four hours of Indianapolis; close enough to go for a weekend, but far away enough to feel like a vacation.

While we were in St. Louis, we stayed at the Drury Plaza Hotel, and we really need to talk about it. We normally travel with our camper and skip hotels. It’s more cost-effective for us to travel most places (especially within a day’s drive) with our camper. BUT. The Drury Plaza Hotel changed the game for me: a great view of the Arch, a breakfast buffet that felt like an actual restaurant, unlimited popcorn and pop in the lobby all day, and something called a 5:30 Kickback they advertise as a snack time but is an actual full meal…all included in your room rate.

When I shared my shock and awe of the Drury Plaza Hotel on social media, people weren’t as surprised as I was–PEOPLE KNOW HOW WONDERFUL THIS PLACE IS. And they never told me. If this was supposed to be a secret, I’m refusing to stay quiet. It’s a magical place (there’s a rooftop pool! look for part of Ellie’s tooth if you’re there!), and we should all have the experience at least once.

You can get to Gateway Arch National Park and the Old Courthouse in less than a five minute walk. This isn’t the Arch of your childhood either, the grounds, the entrance, and the underground museum have all been remodeled and updated. It looks amazing. When we were there in 2015, it was under construction and not very pretty to look at. But now! Now it’s amazing. Make sure you leave enough time before your tram ride up to the top of the Arch to explore the museum exhibits. It’s kid-friendly, utilizes universal design making it accessible to almost everyone, and really interesting (unfortunately, the actual Arch isn’t as accessible; the construction makes it pretty much impossible to redesign or make friendlier for more people). The museum curators also did a good job of addressing some painful parts of our history in relationship to westward expansion. The exhibits tell the story of the area from three different perspectives: the white settlers, the Native Americans, and the Mexican settlers. It’s done really well.

(The Park suggests you buy tickets online ahead of time if you want to ride the tram or do any of the boat/helicopter tours. Especially in the summer, things sell out fast and you don’t want to have to wait hours for your ride time.)

Make sure you actually visit the Old Courthouse too, don’t just walk by in your way to the Gateway Arch. The Old Courthouse is part of the National Park Service and worth a stop. Both the Dred Scott case and the Virginia Minor case were heard in this courthouse, so the American history is rich and important. You don’t have to spend all morning there, but don’t miss it.

The park, formerly known as Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, was renamed Gateway Arch National Park and became an official national park in 2018. The National Park Service has worked hard to make the whole park an experience, not just the Arch. The grounds are beautiful and spacious. As we walked around, people were biking, using electric scooters, running on their lunch breaks, and playing frisbee with their dogs. You could easily spend the day at the park between the courthouse, museum, Arch, and the surrounding areas. Behind the Old Courthouse is Kiener Plaza complete with a splash pad, fountain, and playground. (If you’re there in the morning, walk the few blocks over to Pharoah’s Donuts. When you walk in, there is powdered sugar hanging in the air so you know those are going to be good donuts. It’s nothing fancy to look at, but the donuts are so good. Grab a box and head back to the playground to eat them.)

If you’re not into a picnic lunch (but seriously, why not?), take a stroll over to Laclede’s Landing where there are food and entertainment options. We ate at Mas Tequila Cantina and I’d definitely recommend it if you’re bad at making choices and just want to be told where to go (i.e. the first paragraph) for good food.

What’s great about the Drury Plaza Hotel location is that later in the evening, you can walk the few blocks over to Ballpark Village at Busch Stadium for a Cardinals game. You don’t have to mess with traffic or parking, you just waltz on into Ballpark Village carefree and fancy free. If you don’t have a ticket, you can grab food and a seat at one of the many restaurants or bars in the Village, but if you can get a ticket, seeing a game in Busch Stadium is bucket-list worthy. We got to take the girls to their first major league baseball game in St. Louis, and it was an experience they won’t forget.

You could hit a few highlights on a long weekend in St. Louis, but if you have the time, try to stay a little longer. This was our family’s third trip to St. Louis and every single time we leave wishing we had just a few more days.

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-I’ve got so many recommendations for St. Louis. If you need more (like the not-to-be-missed City Museum or all the free attractions), you can see this post from our first visit and this one for our second visit.

-There’s still time to plan a trip for the 4th of July weekend! Fair Saint Louis is happening at the Gateway Arch National Park July 4th, 5th, and 6th (2019). It’s humbly called “America’s Biggest Birthday Party” and includes musical acts, air shows, free family fun, and fireworks celebrating our nation’s independence. Any time is a good time to visit St. Louis, but this weekend will be extra special

–DISCLOSURE: This is a sponsored post in partnership with the National Park Service and Explore Saint Louis. All opinions are my own.

We live across from a cemetery.

Less than two acres with a sloping hill, it is nestled between trees and a busy road. The gravel driveway takes you on a half-circle loop before depositing you across from the boundary line that separates our house from my aunt’s.

For decades, my grandpa was the caretaker, mowing the grass in the cool of the evening, picking up silk flowers as they blew off headstones, and helping to prepare sites for graveside services.

I never knew to be concerned or weirded out by our closeness to the dead. I wore frilly dresses made by my grandma as we hunted Easter eggs in the front yard, steps away from the cemetery. We celebrated Christmas and Thanksgiving nestled in the small den–where my grandparents kept all the toys–as cars crept slowly down the rocky lane to visit their deceased loved ones.

My grandpa is now buried in the cemetery across from my house, the house he and my grandma built, the one that became too much to care for after he died, the house that we bought in 2017. My niece, the baby taken too soon, who only lived a short thirty two days, is laid next to him. My grandma’s name is already etched on a headstone, patiently waiting for her to join my grandpa.

In the summer months, the girls and I walk the dogs in the cemetery. They race their bikes down the hill as I wander through the headstones looking for the oldest one, the youngest one, the one with the kid born the same year as me but who didn’t make it through high school.

The day before a funeral, a friend from high school’s dad will show up with a backhoe to dig a new grave. He works alone and efficiently, rain or snow or shine. The next morning, the funeral home arrives, erects their tent, puts down the odd pretend grass-carpet, and sets up folding chairs. From my office window, I attend a graveside service for someone I don’t know, bowing my head when they bow their heads, and standing when someone plays taps.

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Last month on my trip to Fort Wayne, I had the opportunity to spend the afternoon at The Genealogy Center in the Allen County Public Library. Their library is the second largest genealogy library in the country, only topped by Utah’s Mormon genealogy library. People travel from all parts of the country and world to research ancestors, property, and family trees there. The sheer volume of resources, family histories, and yearbooks from around the United States will take your breath away. Standing in the stacks, thinking about the miles of books just telling us about people who lived before us felt reverent to me.

I can’t begin to explain all the information accessible through this library. Those family tree websites? You can use them for free at the library. Those trained ancestry professionals you see interviewed on TV? Those are the people who work at this library. All the old newspapers, land deeds, census records, and birth certificates you might want to gather as you trace your family back multiple generations? You can get them there.

Before the trip, I was asked to submit some family information: who are my parents, when were they born, where were my grandparents married. When I arrived at the center, I met with a Genealogy Librarian who had spent a few hours completing my family tree for me. I walked away from our time together with a stack of family documents (census records from my great-great grandparents, birth certificate for my namesake relative, pictures of headstones in Illinois from five generations back, pictures of my grandparents’ grandparents…) and the name of every person on my family tree back six generations.

It’s a little unheard of to be able to fill in six generations back so quickly, the genealogy librarian told me, it’s not normally this easy.

It helped that my lines were so solidly American. The Keatons and the Ritters, the Kimerys and the Spitzners have been in the Midwest for a long time; we immigrated to America in the early 1800s, worked our way west pretty quickly, and then stayed put. We came mostly from England with a little bit of Germany and France mixed in; we became farmers and teachers and factory workers and we didn’t move around much. We liked Illinois and Indiana, the land was good for farming and the cities were just close enough for those who wanted to work in developing industries.

The researcher was able to show me where our German last names were slowly Americanized and the names of the many relatives who took up arms in the Civil War to fight against the confederacy.

I learned it’s often hard to track families back this far because our patriarchal society didn’t always keep record of women well. Maiden names weren’t important and obituaries identified women as “Mrs. Christopher Graham” instead of “Mrs. Mary (Ritter) Graham.” Often when we start digging into our ancestors, we get stopped on maternal lines. I was proud to see the women in my family often carried their maiden names around on official documents even if it wasn’t common for the time period.

You could keep going easily, the librarian told me as our time drew to a close. We didn’t stop your tree because we got stuck, we just ran out of time. But you could come back and probably go a lot farther without too much trouble.

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When a grave is dug, and then later, a casket is covered, you don’t need as much dirt as you took out. It seems silly to tell you that detail, but if you live across the road from a cemetery, it’s important.

In the corner of the cemetery, near where the bumpy gravel drive drops off at our property line, is a pile of dirt. An old sign, created by my grandpa years ago, shares the “Free Dirt” proclamation. The fresh, rich earth goes fast so you have to hurry if you need some for your yard, for your garden, for your field. I’ve received text message reminders from my aunt when the good dirt arrives.

There’s good dirt over there if you need any.

In warmer weather, Chris will hook up the trailer to our riding lawnmower, the girls will jump in the back with their kid-sized shovels, and they’ll take a trip to the graveyard for dirt to fill our landscaping or to top off the garden. I don’t try to think too much about why the dirt is extra fertile or what I’m shoveling as I spread it around my newly-planted bushes. I know why it’s the good dirt, and I leave the thought at that.

I am not a farmer like my ancestors.
I don’t work in a factory like my grandpa and my great-grandpa.
I was the first person on my dad’s side of the family to earn a bachelor’s degree, the second on my mom’s.

I dreamed about leaving Indiana, the Midwest, the cornfields and the soybeans when I was growing up. This place was not meant for me.

But here I am, living in the house my grandparents built, sending me kids to the school my parents went to, passing my uncle on the road as he drives the school bus and learning how to garden–with the rich cemetery soil my grandpa cared for–from my aunt who lives next door.

I’ve decided to stay put.
I’ve decided to tell my daughters they don’t have to get rid of their names to live a happy life.
I’ve decided that small and quiet is better for me.
I’ve decided that staying put, taking walks around headstones, and growing things here, in the Midwest, is where I’m supposed to be.

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*If you haven’t visited The Genealogy Center in Fort Wayne, Indiana, I think you should. You can check out their resources or get access to their trained professionals who want to help you find the pieces of your family tree on their website. You can also sign up for a free 30-minute consult with one of their librarians. I got a little extra help and attention, because I was there to write about my experience, but you have access to all the resources and information they have.

*Fun fact: If you ever come across old yearbooks or family histories (a lot of families have bound books about their ancestors), and you don’t know what to do with them, The Genealogy Center will gladly accept them. They’ll add them to their shelves (and electronic records) so people can have access to the information for generations to come.

DISCLOSURE: THIS IS A SPONSORED POST. I VISITED THE LIBRARY IN CONJUNCTION WITH A SPONSORED TRIP WITH VISIT FORT WAYNE.