Road Trip: Ohio. Again...
Day 8: Tuesday, April 18, 2023 - St. Louis, MO, and Gateway Arch National Park
Day's statistics:
Weather: upper 70s
Steps: Steve 17,531; Linda 17,514
Travel: 705 miles
Breakfast was horrible. Maybe that's too harsh: lacking?
There were unused warmers for something. There were three bagels [left]. There was no milk for cereal. There was only non-dairy
powdered creamer for the coffee. Barely any fruit. I asked about creamers for the coffee and the woman at the desk said that she
was out sick the previous day and didn't get her order. But who waits until they are completely out of supplies to order more?
Linda had a bagel with cream cheese, and I had a couple toaster waffles. Both of our toasted items melted the styrafoam plates.
We arrived near the Gateway Arch, and tried to find a parking space. We used an app to try to locate free parking, and we eventually did.
But it was too far from the arch. So we decided to move closer. On the way to a garage that was closer, we passed right by the Saint
Louis Cardinals' stadium. I clicked this shot, but the phone focused on the dirty windshield instead. But the gist is still there.
We wound up parking two long blocks away from the arch. We started onward. The sun was bright and on the other side of the arch, so it
made taking pictures, especially selfies, a little - okay, a lot - of a challenge. But we took one anyway.
Getting closer.
If we only knew which way to go... (because, like, just walking in the direction of the 630 foot tall arch isn't sufficient).
A shot that can only be taken at a certain time of the day on a limited number of days in a year. Glad we got it - unplanned too.
The Gateway Arch is a National Park.
So of course we got our stamp.
We were finnaly there, about 9:10, bought our tickets.
Before heading downstairs, we used the restrooms. While I waited for Linda, I read a sign near a scanner that indicated that
parking at the Stadium East parking garage is capped at $9.00 if the parking ticket is validated at this scanner. Really?!!?
I looked at the ticket and that just happens to be where we parked. Great!
I validated the parking ticket and we then proceeded through security, and headed downstairs.
On the floor as one ascends the stairs is this crude North America map highlighting Saint Louis.
On the lowest level, there is a café, a museum sort of display, a gift shop, and the trams. There is a north and
south tram, but on this day, a Tuesday in April, only the north tram was running.
Linda went off to the gift shop and I was going to look around a little. I happen to overhear guide talking to a woman and her
two kids about the lift time. I looked at our tickets and realized that, unlike the "next tour at 10:30" time on the clock, we
were queuing up for the 10:00 tour. I ran to the gift shop and got Linda, and we joined the line.
We were Group 4 - though there were only two of us.
While we progressed toward the tram car, we saw a movie and heard some information and statistics about the arch, mostly around
how long it took to build and how tall it was, especially compared with other known landmarks. Also, the arch was built from
February 1963 to October 1965, is the tallest arch in the world, and the tallest manmade structure (which is different than
"building") in the western hemisphere.
We proceeded even further down and lined up in front of the tram cars associated to our group.
While we waited, more statistics were projected on the doors that we would go through to get into the car. We didn't realize at
first that this was happening, then we found that the info didn't stay up long, and the images I got weren't too clear.
When the tram arrives, we had to wait for the people coming down to get out of the cars.
The car seats five. It is a little smallish - which is why visitors are asked if they suffer from claustrophobia when they buy
their tickets - and the opening is rather narrow and short (though it is taller than it might appear in the picture).
The tram cars are unique because they combine an elevator and an escalator in one - because most of the travel is essentially
vertical, until the tram approaches the top where it becomes more level.
I tried to take some pictures of the mechanics and work areas while going up, but with the motion of the car, it was challenging.
And yes, there is a staircase used by maintenance workers that goes to the top. There HAS to be.
While I was taking pictures out the window, "someone" was taking a picture of me. Again. And this shot gives a good reference for
how high the door is. Or isn't, depending on your perspective.
And that same someone took a selfie of themself too.
At the top there are seven windows on each side for viewing.
A stitch looking east, with the Mississippi in the foreground, and Illinois beyond it (the black section "sticking up" on the left is
an artifact from the stitch process - I took it out in one sample but then lost the two bridges, so I left it in).
And looking west.
Some individual closer-up shots of the city including the Gateway Park with the shadow of the arch, the old courthouse (with
Luther Ely Smith Square in front, and Kiener Plaza behind), basillica, the Cardinals' statdium, the highway system, and more.
And again I'm caught taking pictures...
The views were specatacular, and it would have been nice to stay up there longer - but the tram brought the previous group down and had
returned to the top - and we were to get on it.
But just before queuing up to board, we grabbed another selfie.
We got our feet back on terra forma. We returned to the gift shop to complete the shopping trip that was cut short earlier.
We also passed this model of the park and arch.
A dedication to the minds that made the arch possible.
There was a... let's call it a structure in the middle that resembled a small cross section of the arch. But it also had a couple
monitors in it that looked like it was showing a live-feed from the arch.
On the way out, we passed the museum like section. There was a diarama of what Saint Louis looked like many years ago.
We left the park about 10:45 and headed in the direction was came in, and happen to locate our next destination right after
leaving the park perimeter.
Our next stop was at the Basilica of Saint Louis, King of France. It just happens to be in the pictures from the arch just above.
We didn't realize it was THIS close to the arch. But a win since we had no where to drive to.
Rather than rewrite the history of the basillica, here's the historical plaque on location.
The basillica was open, and we went inside to look about.
The main altar.
A side altar with the crossed keys and ombrellino, signifying the basillica.
The other side altar.
The pipe organ.
Some potted hydrangia along the prayer railing.
A painting and some statues from the rear of the basillica including one of Saint Louis IX and Saint Joan of Arch. I mean Arc.
Our visit to the basillica wasn't too long, and we left the basillica and the Gateway Park area and headed back into town.
At this point it was too early for lunch as it was just about 11:00. But it wasn't too early for some good coffee,
making up for a lack of caffeine at breakfast.
One block over and two blocks up - one block further than the parking garage - was a Starbucks®.
We stopped in and shared coffee while trying to find words on the Spelling Bee, and reading some news.
We sat until almost noon, and then headed toward our lunch spot. Across the street from the Starbucks® is
the Saint Louis Cardinals' stadium. There is a strip mall located on this side of the stadium (and we don't
know if it is or isn't one of the entrances to the stadium).
As we continued our walk, we passed this marker (don't remember exactly where it was but it was within a block of stadium).
It turns out that lunch was on the other side of the next block. Parking in the garage that we did turned out to be
super-serendipitous as the arch, basillica, Starbucks®, and lunch were all nearby, AND the fee was capped at $9.00.
Around the corner at the end of the block across the street from the garage was our lunch spot, across the street from the stadium.
We were eating at Salt & Smoke,
a barbeque restaurant. We were in Saint Louis. How could we NOT have BBQ at least once.
We decided to sit inside rather than out, not because of the temperature, but the breeze.
We reviewed our menus and decided what we wanted for lunch.
Linda had a fried jalapaño and cheddar bologna sandwich with a side of slaw (it's a vinegar based slaw, not mayo based) -
not the best picture to tell what it is.
I had the pulled pork plate, which included a bacon and cheddar popover, with sides of pit beans with smoked bacon and slaw.
The pork was naked, and one can dress it with a choice of four sauces available at the table. I tried all four (even the
Mustarolina) and preferred the Bestie a tad more than the Hotangy, while the I Can't Even was okay - it just more like liquid
heat than it was a hot flavorful sauce.
We enjoyed the meal.
On the way out, we saw this Beer Garden that was next door.
We walked to the parking garage. Rather than stop at the floor our car was parked on - red, not that you can tell from the elevator...
... but rather we went all the way to the roof because I thought we might be able to get a decent shot similar to this.
We walked down the stairs to the level the car was on, got in, used our validated ticket to pay the reduced fair, and headed out.
Linda read on a site called Atlas Obscura about a church named
Saint Liborius. What made this church special was that it was abandoned. And a group took it over and converted it into and indoor
skate park - they removed the pews and built ramps in their place. We thought we'd check it out because it was relatively nearby.
We put the address into the GPS and headed out. We were a dozen or so blocks away from the church and pretty much every block - it
felt like though it was probably every other block - had a stop sign. We did our pause stop. We might not quite have hit zero MPH,
but we were pretty close to it. The guy behind us, on the other hand, had other ideas. He passed us, doing like 40, and proceeded
through all the stop signs we could see without so much as even hitting the brakes. Some people are just dumb. I'd have posted a link
to a video of the idiot if we were in OUR car as we have a dash came and I GLADLY would have put it online.
Anyway, we eventaully arrived at the church.
While it may not be REALLY apparent that the church is - was - abandoned, looking at the main steeple there is missing glass.
The front doors were locked. I was able to get - without Linda's knowledge - some tiny pictures through a hole in one of the doors,
but there is almost no actual skate park related anything visible - one shot has a ramp on the left side of it.
The main stone (there is no longer Roman numeral less than 2888).
The old [probably] Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto. Hopefully the statue was properly disposed of.
We walked completely around the building and all the doors were locked, and there was no one to be found.
There was some evidence that people had recently been there, but that was it.
So we got back into the car and moved on.
Our next destination was the zoo. It was less than a half hour away from the church.
We found a parking space in a spot that a group of teens was vacating. I parallel parked, and we looked for the entrance. We
first walked down the hill in one direction only to find that wasn't the entrance. Then we headed back up the hill past the car.
We asked someone where the entrance was, and they "that way a little, on the left" (they didn't actually say "comma"...),
pointing in the direction we were going. We passed some tulips.
We also saw a large open parking lot beyond the entrance. We entered the visitor's center, and were given a map. We used the
facilities and headed out to view some animals.
The first section we visited was the River's Edge. We came across an enclosure with a waterfall.
Of the first six or so enclosures, half had animals visible. The first animal we saw was a capybara, trying to hide behind a
tree. (He laid down right after this, so there are no other pictures of it.)
A [n African?] hyena.
Nests (?) in a tree.
A red river hog.
Some eastern crested guineafowl.
We next made our way to the hippo pool.
A spotted hyena (which seems to be different that the hyena from above).
Asian elephants: a male, two females, and a baby.
Black bear.
There were some fish.
There were quite a few swans, and they inhabit swan island in the middle of the lake.
There was a semicircular enclosure that was divided into three sections. Two of the sections were closed,
and we almost missed this guy (or gal) in the third.
In the Historic Hill section we entered the primate house.
A black and white ruffed lemur.
Ring tailed lemurs.
A couple other monkeys that I didn't get their exact names.
There was an outdoor section that was connected to the indoor section.
A cotton top tamarin.
A coquerel's sifaka (it's in the lemur family).
The next section at the back of the zoo was a large outdoor section, called Red Rocks, containing mostly African and
Australian animals.
An African lion and lioness.
Referees. I mean zebras.
Tigers.
Camels.
Addax...es? Addaxi? Oh, more than one addax.
Chinese goral.
A group of banteng.
Babirusa.
Speke's gazelles.
Sarus crane.
Nile lechwe.
Kangaroos, including a pregnant female jill.
An okapi, more closely related to a giraffe rather than a zebra.
Reticulated giraffes - aka long neckies - are the tallest living land animal.
Ostrich (probably, or maybe even an emu).
Somali wild asses - this species is NOT a cross between a donkey and a zebra, despite their long ears and striped legs.
Transcaspian urial.
East African crowned cranes.
Addra gazelles.
Black-tailed prairie dogs.
Red panda.
After the red panda, we found a Starbucks® and decided to share a cold beverage. We sat at the table near the café
overlooking the pond. A couple American white pelicans stopped by. No, that isn't a deformity - during breeding season, both
the male and female develop a large bump, or "horn", on their bill that falls off when the season is over.
The world is full of exhibitionists - and what better place for an exhibitionist than a zoo. I was specifically asked (seriously,
I was) to take a picture of this because, well, take a look (it might not be noticable in the shot, but let's just say her pants
didn't leave much to the imagination).
Our next exhibit were the birds-in-tuxedos (penguins). There was an indoor and an outdoor areas.
Humboldt penguins.
Feeding and shower tine.
We went inside - and the temperature dropped probably 20 degrees.
Emporer penguins.
Puffins.
There was a bird house and a reptile house, but we didn't go into either of those.
We spent over two hours at the zoo, though it didn't feel like it. We left the zoo and were considering
going to the Fine Art Museum which was right over there - that was right down the road from the zoo.
We had a four hour drive ahead of us to the next city - Indianapoilis - so we we headed out as it was now a little after 4:00.
At the roundabout at the end of the road that the zoo is on is this sculpture sort of display.
Ten minutes down the highway we passed over the Mississippi again, and thus another state line (yes, the sign reads
"Welcome to Illinois", trust me).
Also passing over the Mississippi - at least here - is a time zone. We transitioned from Central to Eastern for the duration of our trip.
We wound up following a tow truck for a little while. The problem with this vehicle wasn't the driver, but rather that there were polished
steel panels on the back of the truck that shined the sun directly back at us - blindingly. Linda found the company online - via the URL
painted on the side of (Petriff Towing) - and used their form to let them know
about this problem. We never heard back.
Here is a during and after.
One big reason why I take multiple shots of the same thing - especially in a moving car (though I try not to take too many pictures
while driving and the few times I do, I do so as safely as possible - and encourage Linda to too is so that situations like this
don't happen. While driving along, we suddenly came across a mini gateway arch - in the Effingham, Illinois region. But you can't
tell it's an arch from this shot.
But you sure can from this one.
We have two shots of this cross. One is much clearer, but doesn't quite show the enormity of the structure. This one, though the
phone focused on the a-pillar, has a house for comparison purposes.
As we drove along, we happen to notice a road sign that, similar to "Lodging exit ###" or "Restaurants exit ###", this one read
"World's Largest ________". Wait, what? It turns out that we were approaching a town called Casey, Illinois. Casey is supposedly
known for quite a few "Worlds Largest" items. Twelve, actually - though it WAS thirteen. There were other large ojects too, about
36 in all, though they just weren't "world's largest". We found quite a few, but not all - based on the map, some were moved, and
some may have been inside. We drove around and pictured most of them, and got out of the car a couple times too.
Going into town was a large rack of antlers (and we missed the wooden token and pizza cutter across the street, somehow).
Casey looked like a "typical American town".
We next came across what is called a "puzzle" (think one of those bar / pub separate-the-two-nails sort of puzzles).
It didn't take long to find a couple other large items, such as the world's largest mailbox (supposedly one can actually go
up into the mailbox, though we were probaably too late {it was after 5:00} for us to had we even known), world's largest barber
poll, and pencil. These three were all within a turn-around-and-see-it distance from each other.
We got back in the car to drive to the next street over, and on the corner was a large bird cage (you can still see the barber
poll in the rear view mirror).
We continued to drive over to the next street to see a large taco (visible from near the barber poll but better from this angle),
and the world's largest key.
The world's largest wind chime, across the street from the world's largest rocking chair.
When I got out of the car to take the above two pictures, I was able to get this shot, while standing in the middle of the road. It was,
as said before, after 5:00. And it was a week day before summer travel starts. (That barber poll is visible in the distance too.)
Down the same road was the world's largest teeter-totter.
We turned around and headed back into town looking for more large items.
We turned left onto South Central Avenue, and came across these two items that were next to each other, a large mouse trap, and the
world's largest golf club (a little bit of it can be seen in the mouse trap shot) - the perspective from the road isn't favorable.
We went back to Main Street, turned east, and headed toward the rocking chair. This time we noticed the large yardstick.
We were looking for the large spinning top. We drove down a street, turned, and came across this large minion.
We didn't find the top. But the map indicated that the golf tee and pitch fork were northeast of where we were. So we headed
that way by getting back on Main Street and heading east.
And on the wall across from the yardstick were the former world's largest knitting needles.
Just before, and on the same block as the rocking chair, was the piggie bank.
We unknowingly captured the Big W's, though one is hidden behind the directional sign. This was across the street from
the rocking chair. Yes, we drove this segment three times, and saw different things each time.
Further down, beyond the teeter-totter, was the large book worm.
We stayed on Main Street and about nine blocks down was a directional to "turn here" for the golf tee and pitchfork.
A couple blocks down was a country club - right?!!? - with a golf course where the world's largest golf tee was.
We left the club, turned left, and continued on.
On the property of a restaurant - or at least next to it - on a dead-end, was the world's largest pitchfork (the second shot
is better than the first, but the very tips of the tines were missed).
The pitchfork was the last large object we viewed. In all, we saw 9 of the 11 world's largest items, and
12 of the 20 large items that were in Casey.
After fourty-five minutes of driving around the town, we got back on the highway and continued our journey to Indianapolis.
About 20 miles outside Casey we made a rest stop. This one was at a Pilot.
We used the facilities and also decided, since it was about 7:30, we should eat something before it got too late.
We stopped at a Love's, got some gas, and picked up a chicken tender salad to share, and ate it some of the chiabata rolls
we picked up at Aldi in Chicago, in the car before getting underway again.
Another ten miles down the road we crossed yet another state line, the second of this day.
It was night and the car was moving at 75 MPH - so trust me that this sign reads "Welcome to Indiana".
At about 8:30 we arrived at the Microtel Inn & Suites. I checked in, parked the car, and we made our way to our room.
We did the luggage thing, relaxed a little, washed up, and went to sleep.