Until three months ago, I lived in Saint Louis. I was there for five and a half years, and I loved it, even in the summer when the temperature reached 108 degrees, but I could never, in good conscience, call myself a Saint Louisan. You can’t be a Saint Louisan unless you went to high school there. In Saint Louis, the high school you attended is an indelible mark that carries important information about your religion, social class, and salient personality traits. You can’t even pick a random high school and pretend you went there. Saint Louisans have an elaborate social network comprised of cousins and old, old friends which allows them to identify outsiders easily.

When you reach Springfield, turn your car radio to 88.1. That’s KDHX, Saint Louis’s community radio station. If you hate what’s playing, try again later: the format changes every couple of hours, and it’s run by volunteers with very deep record collections. There are almost no commercials. It’s about as perfect as radio gets. It will also ease the pain of the last 100 miles on I-55, possibly the most boring stretch of highway in America.

The second thing is the City Museum in the Washington Avenue Loft District. Don’t be put off by the name. It’s not a museum, per se, more like a gigantic art installation where everyone is encouraged to touch, crawl, climb, swing, jump, slide, run, and scream as much as they want. There’s a network of tunnels to explore. There’s Monstrocity, an enormous jungle gym constructed of pieces of salvage from around the city, including airplane fuselages and a fire truck. There’s a working shoelace machine, in honor of the building’s prior incarnation as the International Shoe Factory. There’s a six-story tornado slide. There’s a Wurlitzer organ. There’s a carnival midway with a display of corn dogs through the ages. There’s a circus. If we had a City Museum here in Chicago, we’d never shut up about it.

WHERE TO EAT: Pappy’s Smokehouse. Don’t miss the ribs or pulled pork. pappyssmokehouse.com.

WHERE TO SLEEP: Moonrise Hotel. Space-themed boutique hotel. $104-$309 per night. moonrisehotel.com.

WHAT TO DO: City Museum. Art installation/playground made from old buildings and salvaged material. $12, $10-$12 after 5 PM Fri.-Sat. citymuseum.org.

THREE OTHER ROAD TRIPS

Two cycling day trips to three brewpubs

Mount Carroll‘s subtle and spooky kind of charm

Golf-cart livin’ in Northport