Today we headed for St. Louis to visit the Gateway Arch National Park. We started with a movie showing how the Arch was constructed. What I didn’t realize was that this thing was built in my lifetime, when I was going to high school. The construction was fascinating – increasingly smaller steel triangles stacked on top of each other by a crane that would hoist itself up the side of the Arch as it grew.
We rode the tram up. It’s not really a tram, it’s 8 “barrels” that fit 5 people each and swivel somewhat like a ferris wheel as you go up and level off. They were so small and you could tell lots of people were getting claustrophobic.
Then when you get to the top, it’s small and crowded up there as well. The windows are only 7 inches high and 27 inches wide. But the view is fantastic!
Next stop was the Bellefountaine Cemetery. We had two tour guides. The first showed us the graves that were related mostly to Clark and his family, the other guide showed us the interesting stuff, like million dollar mausoleums and quirky authors buried there.
The final stop was the Boat House which was a museum with full sized replicas of the boats used by Lewis and Clark.
Beautiful pictures of the arch & the view from the top! The mausoleum to Anheusar Busch was interesting. Wonder if there was a geocach in Bellefontaine Cemetery like in Greenlawn. Sounds like an interesting & fun day!