Day 29

Day 29

This morning we left around 7:30 and drove four hours to St. Louis for a short stop.  Since the most notable thing to see in the city is the arch that is where we went. The place was a mad house; there were tons of people everywhere. First we had to pass through security, which was pretty strict so we felt like we were in an airport. Then we jumped in line to by tickets to go to the top of the arch. Surprisingly the tickets were cheap and we had a discount with our national park pass. We had about a half hour before our time to go up, so we walked around the museum of the western expansion. It was a well-done museum, it even had those animated life-like robots of famous people that would talk to you, which kind of creeped me out and made me think of the movie “Night at the Museum”. The museum was really big and there were walls and walls of information to read, it would have taken us all day to read, so we skimmed and glanced.

            It was time for us to go to the top, so we got in line and then went through the different rooms to await going up. All of the rooms and even just the visitors center for the arch was so detailed and so well decorated, I thought that we were in line for a ride at universal studios theme park where they have all the really decorated waiting rooms, we were really impressed. We got to the last waiting room and then boarded the pod that was to take us up. It was about 4 feet tall and maybe 5 feet wide but I think it was less then that and five people sat in each one. It was small! It takes about 3 minutes to get to the top, forty people go at one time  in 8 pods and then scrunch into this little hallway that is the top middle section of the arch. There are about 20 tiny rectangle windows that you can look out of if you lay your body on this wall/ledge to look over. It was really incredible to look down and see how small everything was. We did find out that on a windy day the arch will sway about 6 feet or more, I felt a little swaying but nothing like that thank God. We had one man in our pod who is afraid of heights but it was his third time to the top, he just gets off and heads straight to the other side of the arch to go down and that is exactly what he did as soon as we got out of the pod.

            It was really neat to be in the arch and I am glad we stopped to do it. St. Louise seems like a really nice city and we want to go back some time but we had to get on the road to head to Indianapolis where we are staying with a friend of the Valder’s. It felt like a long drive, each one seems to feel longer and longer as our trip is winding down. We are starting to feel anxious about getting home.

            We made it to “Indy” and back to our own time zone, yay! We shared some pad Thai since were getting to lazy to cook. Then we spent the evening talking with Paul and his wife in their beautiful hundred year old home. It was really nice to meet them and get to know them. Now we are updating blogs and David is checking his 300+ emails. Now were going to sleep so we can get up and head to WV our last stop and last day of our trip.