Location: St. Louis & St. Charles
When: mid February
Miles traveled: 595
Price of gas: 2.97
Interest: Mirror maze
High point: City Museum!!!
Low points: Cold evenings with nowhere to go.
One
thing learned: My minimum requirements for a happy week long camping experience have
changed to a higher standard.
Missouri is a large state, and I explored one little location, St. Louis and a nearby town of St. Charles. Really, I visited St Charles during my hunt for a state sticker and for their art gallery figure drawing event. But, St. Charles turned out to be one of my favorite hangout places.
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They are standing on top of the Arch
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Gateway Arch NP was my first tourist stop in St. Louis. Light snow started falling as I walked to the visitor center, and by the time I reached the top of the Arch, the snow was really coming down! Thankfully visibility from the top was not completely blocked by the snow. The visitor center's movie about the building of the Arch was more interesting than being in the Arch. The two legs had to be pushed apart in order for the keystone to properly fit. And the day the keystone was put in place was filled with political posturing vs engineering requirements. Politicians wanted the event to happen in the middle of the day when more people and news reporters could witness the event, but the heat of the day causes metal to expand and would have prevented the last section from fitting correctly. A 10am installation time became the compromise, and fire hydrant water was used on the legs of the Arch in an attempt to keep them cool.
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City Museum
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After visiting Gateway Arch, I walked around town and stopped at St. Louis Central Station and
City Museum. Central Station has a mirror maze (in addition to a ropes course and aquarium), which was neat to experience, but not long enough for my taste. The City Museum was awesome!! Described as an artist built playground, there are over 5 floors of weird places to explore. Made from reclaimed architecture, a bus, an airplane, and other stuff acquired from auction houses, City Museum is truly one of a kind playground for kids and interested adults (flexibility and crawling required to explore some areas). Multiple times I started on one floor only to later find myself on a different floor without quite knowing how it happened. City Museum's roof playground and 10 story slides were closed, but their 5 story slide was open, and I slid down it's metal spiral several times! My favorite area was in "The Caves" and looking up at the 5 & 10 story slides from below. City Museum is an awesome, wonderful, and still evolving place. I hope to one day visit it again.
After a busy first day, I hit a plateau. I had seen what came to see and was now unhappy with the cold weather and had nothing fun to do. I looked for interesting and unique places to visit, eventually exploring more and found St Charles to be a quaint historic area, and the weather warmed up. I was almost disappointed now, that during my plateau I decided to leave MO a
day early. I visited the free St Louis Art Museum, Forest Park, the Cathedral Basilica, and
Cahokia historical area. In St. Charles, I was near the junction of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, at the location Louis and Clark started their expedition, and enjoyed an art show tailored to dogs.
By far my best MO experience was at City Museum, but thankfully the rest of my time in Missouri turned out to be pleasant as well. I probably will not write a blog post next week as I will be driving across an island, and the week after that is Easter so there will be no post on April 1st...and then in April taxes are due, so I'm not sure when the next blog post will be. Till then, -Rebecca
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Mirror maze
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| Crocus |
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"Stone Sea" by Andy Goldsworthy
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"Stone Sea" a side view
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a small dome mosaic
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St Louis Cathedral Basilica
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