Things to Do in Godfrey

The classically focused Alexandra Ballet entertains audiences with a well-rounded dance diet ranging from contemporary original pieces to traditional masterworks. The company’s agile dancers have pirouetted their way to uproarious applause in past performances that include The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, and Peter and the Wolf. Since 2003, the company has enriched the community through its educational-outreach programs, which provide youngsters with free learning materials and ballet performances throughout the school year.

The pedal pioneers at Boschertown Grand Prix Racing have been facilitating high-speed adventures on one of the largest tracks in the Midwest for more than half a century. In the early days of racing, the course served as a venue for the homemade karts of avid individuals, but now houses a herd of go-karts, sprint-karts, and super-karts that eliminate the possibility of unfair home upgrades such as engines outfitted with nitrous or the flux-capacitor of a 1981 DeLorean. Drivers as young as 10 reach speeds of up to 17 mph in a standard kart; racers 16 or older helm 24 mph sprint-karts; and drivers 18 or older take control of 28 mph super-karts. Wheels roll over hairpin turns, banked corners, straightaways, and opponents' rights to call themselves "Greased Lightning" as drivers dominate laps around the 5/8-mile track.

Buried in the woods, 15 single- and two-story log cabins line a path leading to a secluded frontier fortress. Masked combatants armed with Tippmann 98 paintball guns ponder the path's obstacles before slinking forward to meet their opponents. Along Bing Field Paintball & Airsoft Park's three wooded fields strewn across 35 acres, players sneak into sniping positions in the Frontier Field's two-story log cabins, the Vietnam Field's two-story guard tower, or the World War II field's two-story hidden U-boat. Four speedball fields––air ball, barrel, concrete, and spool––accommodate paintball players on the other side of the wooded park. Paintball and airsoft packages grant visitors up to seven hours of play, which they can break up with refueling sessions spent scarfing down refreshments while gossiping about opponents' love lives at an onsite concessions stand.

The astronauts deftly dodge the oncoming trickle of rocks and debris from the meteor shower, and as the rubble clears they see the Moon up ahead. It is at this site that they’ll soon establish the first permanent human base. Though it sounds like science fiction, novice astronauts attempt this feat daily at Challenger Learning Center-St. Louis. Part of the Challenger Center for Space Science Education—a nonprofit founded by the families of the astronauts who died in the 1986 Challenger space-shuttle mission—the center educates visitors in science and teamwork with its space simulators. Whether navigating a spacecraft or abetting astronauts at a Mission Control modeled after NASA’s Johnson Space Center, student, community, and corporate groups must maintain a cooperative spirit while rocketing to Mars, assembling a probe, or stealing one of Saturn’s rings.

Chris and Pam Schmick had spent six months cleaning out the scrap metal from their abandoned silos and just finished drilling thousands of holes in its walls. With little time to spare, they prepared for their climbing gym's grand opening on September 2, 1995—a date on which they had already agreed to hold a regional JCCA competition. The effort they've expended in the nearly 20 intervening years shows: today, climbers scramble on top ropes, lead ropes, and more than 20,000 square feet of lava-free climbing surface.

Instructors prepare visitors to surmount the gym's features in a range of classes, such as Rock Gym 101, which is an introduction to top-rope climbing that covers climbing safety, basic technique, and equipment. Once climbers are equipped with gear from the pro-shop, staff shows them around a multi-level bouldering cave, a main climbing area with 30-foot walls shaped by arêtes, cracks, and waves, and the building's five original silos. Elsewhere inside the gym, six auto-belays safely cradle visitors who wish to climb without taking a class.

Carlisle Sports Emporium is a 20-acre complex, which houses a new 6,800-square-foot laser-tag arena, multiple go-kart tracks, and two 18-hole miniature-golf courses. Flanking these three attractions is a roller rink where skaters can experience walking on wheels without having to stick their legs through two different cars’ sunroofs. Visitors can also stretch their sinews on the computerized indoor climbing wall—which can simulate classic climbs such as El Capitan or Devil’s Tower—or hone their hand-eye coordination in an arcade with more than 100 games.