St. Louis

We Can Check St. Louis Off Our Bucket List.

Not sure if St. Louis was on our bucket list, but my apologies to anyone from the wonderful state of Missouri.

Our son Pete’s college club baseball team was playing in a tournament earlier this summer in southern Illinois. Given the timing of the games, we had one afternoon free so we decided to visit the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. There was a great museum with the history behind the Arch, and a lot of details behind the engineering and building of the structure. My engineering background is limited, but I do find the details interesting since working with Legos is a challenge for me.

The trip to the top of the Arch was via a tram with very small cars that could barely carry four passengers, and very cozily at that. I did not realize there are very small windows at the top of the Arch, so you had 10-15 minutes to take pictures. In fairness to the city, we did not do a lot of research about other possible tourist destinations, but I think setting aside 4-6 hours gives you adequate time to visit the Arch.

While I have heard many times about how polite people from the Midwest are, they still did not fail to impress. Everywhere we went people were very helpful and friendly. Arriving at our hotel at 10:30 PM the front desk staff were genuinely curious about our flight and why we were visiting. We had the full Midwest experience with the weather as well, as some friends at a nearby hotel had to shelter in a stairwell during a tornado watch. While we did not have that scare at our location, it was impressive to watch the rain coming down sideways.
We hope your summers are going well and that you have some fun trips and activities planned.