We left Bowling Green Kentucky on Sunday, June 25 and headed for St. Louis. We took a route that brought us to the confluence of Ohio and Mississippi Rivers near Cairo, Illinois.
The river confluence is at Fort Defiance State Park in the southern tip of Illinois. You take a bridge over the Ohio from Kentucky to Illinois to get to the park (which, frankly, was pretty run down). In the picture at the right, the Mississippi is on the right of the picture and the Ohio is on the left. Lewis and Clark camped here at the start of their expedition and the Union had a fort here during the Civil War. After we left Fort Defiance, we drove through Cairo IL on our way to crossing the Mississippi at Cape Giradeau, Missouri. Cairo was very rundown and very sad to drive through.
We spent the first week of this week complaining about the cool, cloudy and sometimes wet weather. That changed on our drive to St. Louis. On I-55 driving north to the city, the thermometer in my Subaru got up to 106. Now, it feels like summer.
In St. Louis, we chose to stay right downtown within walking distance to the Gateway Arch National Park and Busch Stadium. On Monday, June 26, we spent the morning visiting the Gateway Arch. The Arch is amazing - it was built in 1965 to commemorate our country's westward expansion. It was designed by Eero Saarinen, whose other works include the TWA terminal at JFK airport and Dulles airport. There is a terrific museum at the Park that gives a good history of westward expansion, the role the city of St. Louis played, and appropriately contextualizes this history with the impact on Native Americans and African Americans.
Of course, if you visit the Arch you need to go to the top (630 feet - which is over 100 feet higher than the Washington Monument). Since you go up on an elevator, there is an ingenious design to take you up the top and around the curve, so to speak. You're in a small compartment that holds 5 people very close together - not recommended if you're claustrophobic. Once you get to the top, you can view West to the city of St. Louis or east to Illinois (East St. Louis). As you can see in the picture on the right, the area at the top is small and you have to lean over to see out the windows. You get 8-10 minutes at the top and then back down the elevator.
In case you're not familiar with the Arch, see the picture to the left. While the Arch was completed in 1965, it did not become a national park until 2018. After we completed touring the museum we wandered the grounds and down to the Mississippi and took a boat ride on a faux Mississippi paddle wheeler. The boat went up and down the river under several bridges (including the Stan Musial bridge for I-70 - they love their Cardinals here). While interesting, the whole area was pretty industrial and the only other boat traffic were transport barges, so it was not the most scenic boat ride we've taken on this trip.
On Tuesday, June 27, we drove out to look at the house I lived in during first grade (1964!) in the suburb of Creve Coeur. Surprisingly, not much had changed over almost 50 years except that the trees which were very small are now fully grown. We then went to the former Union Station in downtown St. Louis. No longer used as a train station, it's been converted to a hotel, a small convention center, the location for the St. Louis Aquarium and restaurants. We went in the hotel where the lobby of the train station (opened in 1894) had been converted to the lobby of the hotel (see picture to the right). It was amazing.
Of course, we also went to a ballgame - the Cardinals vs. the dreaded Astros. I'd heard that St. Louis is a great baseball town and now, I believe it. Our hotel was jammed with Cards fans young and old - all decked out in red. A Cardinals team that is currently in last place in their division drew 41,000 fans on a Tuesday night for the game which the Cards won 4-2 - and almost everyone stayed until the end. With this game, we've now reached the half way point of major league stadiums to visit.
Next stop is Kansas City.
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