On the Road – June 21 part 2

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We were surprised to find that they basically converted the old Union Station train station into a mall, complete with Food Court, fountains, planters and stores. Luckily, the architecture is a great redeeming quality. The outside of the building is beautiful, as are the inside rafters and other support structures. If you’d like to take a leisurely stroll in the A/C in St. Louis, check it out. And while you’re at it you can eat at Houlihans like we did.

The fountain across the street is a great way to beat the heat if you don’t mind being misted with water that is no doubt old and moldy. It features some great water-spewing sculptures of mythical-looking creatures with great expressions. While walking back to the car we ambushed a kid (he was my age) with a drivers cap and asked him what else we should do in the area. He told us tales of a place to climb around in old school buses atop building. “Where is it,” we asked wisely. “It’s over there,” he said as he pointed over that way.

Our GPS lady lost her voice (Mute button disease, I suppose), so we had to read the directions out loud to ourselves in a British accent. Kidding. We found “City Museum” in the “nearby shit to do” category, and figured that must be it. Yep, it was. And it looked awesome from the outside.

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As our flickr photos attest, we spent the next 3 or so hours climbing around in the dark, through caves, metal forests, felled logs, and stairwells. The St. Louis City Museum is now the number one destination I’d want to take children, if I ever borrowed any for the day. It also helped to calm the desire I’ve had to be “a little bit taller.” If I were any taller I wouldn’t have been able to crouch and crawl through much of the museum … this would have severely ruined my fun time. Sorry, Andy. We wish you could have come with us. Hope you enjoyed staying in the car.

Our City Museum flickr photos probably make the place look smaller than it really is. The building is 10 stories. Not all of it is devoted to crawl spaces, but plenty of it is. I imagine it would take at least 5 trips to the museum to give you a good idea of where the passage you’re about to climb through will take you. Many of the passages are dark. Water drips down in the cave regions. You’d have to be a toddler to see it all, but still, you manage to see plenty of parents and their children braving the darkness together. Kristen and I held hands the whole way. However, I teared up a bit when they wouldn’t let both of us slide down the 10-story spiral slide together. I thought I was going to die. Kristen was glad to be out of the clutches of my clammy hands.

One thing that is particularly frightening is hearing loud clanging, falling, breaking sounds while you’re climbing around in an airplane perched on the edge of a three-story structure made to look like a castle tower. We had no clue what the sound was. While walking back to the car we figured out what it was. Bricks on the 4th story of an old building nearby had come loose and fell onto a doorway overhang just below the 2nd floor. The force ripped one of the overhang support beams from the building and a whole mess of bricks landed on someone’s car. Whew. So glad we parked away from any old buildings.

On the Road – June 21 part 1

The Gateway Arch is a great attraction. The sun was intense, and the heat wave still with us, but we enjoyed it nonetheless. Luckily the park around the Arch had walkways shaded by trees. We broke off and walked by some of the ponds, only to retreat quickly because we must have smelled great to the mosquitos.

Yesterday, when we arrived, we talked about going up into the Arch and weren’t sure whether we wanted to. We didn’t really know the size of the structure, or how the trip up would be. I’m not really afraid of heights, but I’m not a fool either. The elevator/tram thingie has to be robust enough.

We walked up to the Arch and didn’t know what to do next. Then we saw a security guard doing bag checks near a ramp that went below ground. Had no clue what it was. Thought maybe it was the entrance to the tram ride to the top, so we checked it out. Holy cow, there was a museum down there, some movie screens (Lewis and Clark, and Arch Construction), and tons of people. We had no idea.

The tram ride was exciting, but to most it’d probably be a little scary. You’re in this round pod thing (think “Dr. Evil’s escape egg from Austin Powers”), and there are two vertical slit windows out which you can see the internals of the arch, along with some stairways that follow you on your ride to the top. The pod keeps rotating abruptly as it rises, so as to keep you more of less seated vertically. We only had the two of us on our way to the top. The five seats were filled when we came down.

At the top was a carpeted walkway, and the walls met the floor diagonally. The underside of the top of the Arch is V-shaped, so these carpeted walls probably weren’t far from the actual exterior walls of the arch. You could lean on the slanted walls and look out the 2.5 foot wide X 8 inch tall windows. There were about 10 of them on each side of the walkway. If you boosted yourself up high enough you could look straight down out the windows. Amazing! From here you can see views of the Mississippi on one side, and Downtown St. Louis on the other. The sun was intense, so the colors might have been washed out a bit, but I wanted to relive every minute of it so I took tons of pictures.

You could stay at the top of the Arch as long as you wanted. I think 15 minutes was enough for us. My mouth got dry from the jaw dropping views. We got in line to board the South Tram down. The other three ladies that accompanied us seemed quite ready to get on stable ground.

More later …

On the Road – June 20

Everything is starting to feel like a blur. We made it to St. Louis, Missouri on day two of our journey. When you look at the distance on the map it’s impressive. We’ll be staying here for two nights so we can check out the Arch tomorrow, and Union Station if all goes well. Should be pretty kickass.

Driving through Atlanta around 10am on a Saturday was great. There weren’t very many cars on the road at all. We ignored the beltway and went straight in to the East on I-20, and then took I-75 North. If you ever get a chance to take I-75 North early on a Saturday morning, do it. It’s fun. I doubt a weekday trip on the same route would be as stimulating.

The Mountain roads around Chattanooga were awesome! Even though they might make some people uneasy, I loved driving them. I’m so glad we didn’t bypass them and head to Birmingham instead. Alabama doesn’t interest me at all. We went through Chattanooga just before lunch time on a Saturday, which was a breeze. Really not too many cars on the road. Kristen made a comment that it feels like Cruisin’ USA. It really did feel like we were racing around tight corners, up and down mountains, through valleys, all while seeing impossible landscapes.

Kentucky was the second part of our journey that I grew bored of pretty quickly. The heat wave followed us, so the 97 degree weather didn’t help. Later parts of Tennessee along I-24 were much the same. Illinois brought on a new kind of farm country and some different terrain. Even though it started to look the same, it was still beautiful.

In total we did 9 hours, 18 minutes on the road today. 8 hours is a lot of time to spend behind a desk, and 9 hours is a TON of time to spend driving. Definitely not a pace we can sustain all the way out west.