June 28th, 2001

Out and about in St. Louis...

Woke up in the morning. Lounged around a while catching up on e-mails and working on backlogged journal entries. Around noon we decide to make our way to downtown to take in some sights.

Traffic is suprisingly smooth heading into town... compared to entering the city yesterday it's a breeze. Traffic moves at a brisk pace and in no time we find ourselves closing on the Mississippi River. In the distance the GateWay Arch glimmers in the sun, a silver rainbow rising above the skyline.

We follow signs on the Interstate leading us to the Gateway Arch... it's a good thing it's so easy to find... we have virtually no idea how the downtown of St. Louis is laid out. The map we have in the road atlas is all right... but pretty basic.

We find a place to park about 4 blocks away from the Arch. It costs five dollars for the day. Not too bad. We begin wandering in the general direction of the Arch, which takes us along St. Louie's Mississippi riverfront. Parked along the shore near the arch we see several Steamboats, including a massive one called the American Queen. This thing looks like the Carnival Cruise Ship of steamboats, but I'm sure there's some bigger ones still operating on the river.

The Arch is pretty much what I was expecting... but there was more to it than I thought there'd be. When you get to the arch you enter a tunnel that leads underneath the arch. The tunnel leads to an underground mall that contains two large shops, a movie theatre showing films of the Arch's construction, the trams that take you to the top of the Arch and a large museum detailing the westward expansion of America. We take in the mall for a bit and decide we're famished, so we head to a tavern called the Trainwreck Saloon for lunch. I've been threatened with bodily harm if I don't eat ribs while in St. Louis, so I order them for lunch. You can stop threatening me now! ;P

The Saloon is really neat... it sits in the restored downtown section of St. Louis by the river... there are a number of restaraunts and bars and stores scattered throughout the area. It reminds me a bit of the Jacksonville landing, just created from the existing structures and not a totally new series of buildings.

After eating lunch we head back for the Arch and take a ride to the top. The ride consists of going into another tunnel, walking through a mini-museum on the construction of the arch, going through a metal detector and an x-ray machine. Then they load you into this little spherical chamber with several seats in it. It kind of reminds me of the gondola for a ferris wheel, only it's completely enclosed and would be awful for someone with any degree of claustophobia.

You spend about 5 minutes in the little bubble along with about 20 other people in similar little bubbles before you reach the top of the Arch. Once there you're let out into a little viewing area with small rectangular windows that peer outwards from the Arch. You can see for miles and miles in all directions from the top (as you can tell from the photographs).

Alie and I hang out for a while up at the top taking in the view along with about 30 or 40 other tourists before we head back down. On the way down we end up sharing a "bubble" with a mother and her two kids. Her husband apparently had told her to go on up... and she has some degree of claustophobia and the trip to the top and being in the somewhat confining space of the viewing area has made her a bit upset. Not terribly, mind you, but she's pretty off kilter. Me and Alie talk to her as we wait for the bubble to descend and throughout the descent to keep her mind off the whole thing. She does really well, but swears she won't ever do that again. We take pictures of her and her kids and offer to send them off to her when Alie gets her film developed. I give her daughter the URL for this site and tell her to check it out when she gets the chance.

It's interesting... visiting the Gateway Arch. In a way, it's almost symbolic. Me and Alie are at the Gateway to the second and eastern half of our cross country trip. If I was writing a book this would be cool in a literary sort of way. Or not. ;P

After the Gateway Arch we decide we should visit the Anheuser-Busch Brewery. We're somewhat worried about finding it, so we get directions from the information booth in the Arch. Quite honestly, if we'd driven anywhere near it it would've been impossible to miss. The place was massive... we're talking the size of a college campus. Signs everywhere guiding you to the place to take tours of the establishment.

What sucks, however, is that we've spent too much time at the Arch, and when we get to the brewery the tours have ended for the day. However, the free beer bar at the end of the tour is still open and the bartender is nice enough to serve us even though he's going to be closing in like 15 minutes. So we chill out drinking our beers for a little bit then walk around some in the open display areas. So it wasn't a total loss. ;)

We decided to call it a day at that point.

Signing off from St. Louis...

That's the Arch... in case you couldn't tell. ;)

Um. Bridges. Or something. This was supposed to be a picture of something else that was cool, but the camera took too long to take the photo. Or something.