Wednesday, St. Louis, Missouri

With a crazy day yesterday, a little rearranging of the calendar was definitely needed. We wanted to spend a little more time in St. Louis, to see the Arch and as it turned out, to take a river boat tour. So we called Jo Mills-Kaeser, who was giving us beds and baths for a couple days and asked if we could arrive later. She was of course, completely ok with that.

The St. Louis Arch loomed over us, shiny and bright, blazing in the hot June sun. We had a 10:30 tour ticket, so we arrived at about 9:30 and after a very brief wait for security to clear us, we got our tickets and proceeded to the line for the arch tour. After receiving some brief instructions from the tour guides, who were very young and surprisingly enthusiastic, we proceeded into a small submarine like car to take us to the top of the famous Gateway Arch. Much to our delight and surprise, the view was amazing! Joey was a little freaked out by the height of 630 feet, and the view...especially when you looked straight down to the ground. It was like being in one of those amusement park rides when you are dangling and looking straight down. You could see really far as it was a clear day (a little hazy but clear). Andrew was undaunted by the height and wiggled his way up the little incline to stare right out the window. I guess at four you still have little fear! We could see the Old Courthouse, which is part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.

The story behind the park and the Arch and its dedication to Thomas Jefferson is related to the expansion of the United States into the West during the early 1800's. When Thomas Jefferson finalized the Louisiana Purchase, it opened the West to pioneers who embraced "manifest destiny." The role of St. Louis in the expansion of the West is memorialized in the Gateway Arch. A contest to design a monument in St. Louis that would represent the opening of the West and the role of St. Louis as the gateway to the West was held in 1947. Eero Saarinen won the contest with his design of the Gateway Arch. The central idea behind the arch is a graceful catenary curve, which is similar to the natural curve that hangs at the end of a chain when suspended freely between two points.

We followed from the Arch tour with a quick visit to the museum of western expansion and the gift shop and then a walk down the steps to our tour boat ride on the Mississippi River on the Tom Sawyer. The kids enjoyed the ride...wind in their faces and a little history for all.

From there, we headed West in our own stage coach of a sort...off to Kansas City, Kansas, home of Sporting Kansas and KC BBQ, Jo and Jeff Kaeser and the next step in our adventure.

Radiance

A cloud stood humbly in a corner of the sky.
The morning saw it and crowned it with splendor.

Ravindranath Tagore