We had a great day in St. Louis!

We are way behind in getting travel posts published this summer because we're having too much fun traveling! So we won't be confused about when each "wandering" happened, we'll start each blog with its actual date.

October 8, 2022

Even though our Boondocker hosts tried to talk us out of it, we really wanted to spend a day exploring the city of St. Louis. We were up early, and we were one of the first visitors to the Gateway National Park. In fact, we got a picture of Denisa standing all by herself under that arch. You won't get that picture any other time of the day.

We got to the downtown parking garage right at 9:00. Because this popular park shares parking with all of downtown and the St. Louis Cardinals stadium, parking is at a premium for this stop. We read that if you reserve a parking place through the national park service web site, you can get a five-hour spot for $9. If you just show up at that same parking garage on this baseball play-off game day, it would cost $50. If you arrive when the park first opens, you can get a picture of Mark standing at the base of the arch all by himself--priceless!

This is the largest arch in the world, and it's hard to fit it all in one picture. But as you can see, we tried every angle. There's Denisa underneath the arch, with her arms raised high trying to look as tall as possible.

A new visitor center museum just opened up, and it has some great displays. It has an exhibit that explains that the arch is 630 feet tall, and the legs are 630 feet apart. It's much taller than the Statue of Liberty, but looks short when compared to the Empire State Building.

The new museum exhibits also outline why this arch is here marking the "Gateway to the West,'" as well as the history of the westward expansion across America. 

We had mixed feelings about taking the ride in the tram to the top of the arch. We did that years ago when we brought our young sons to this national park. When we checked on-line last night, all the reserved tram tickets were sold out. But when we arrived this morning, we discovered that they open up more spots for walk-ins. Going to the top was a possibility after all. Visitors that are considering riding to the top of the arch can check out this replica tram car to make sure they feel comfortable with the size  before buying a ticket.

We decided that we couldn't pass up the opportunity to ride to the top of the world's tallest arch again, so we bought the $14 tickets for the 9:45 tram ride. We have to say that the actual trams looks a lot like you are entering a bathroom stall.

The trams are five feet wide. With five seats packed inside, it would be a tight fit for a big group. But with Covid restrictions, you will only be riding with members of your group.

We were glad to have a group of only two, because Mark is more than just a little claustrophobic!

It's a four-minute ride to the top, and then you have ten minutes to look around. Rangers are monitoring your time, and also offering to take your picture at the top beside one of the tiny windows where you can lean over to get the best views.

The young man loading up the trams at the bottom suggested that we look out to the west to see the views of downtown St. Louis. From here we could take a panorama shot.

Straight ahead of us is the green-roofed court house that we will talk about later.

If you look a little to the left, you can see down into the St. Louis Cardinal's stadium where they will be playing later today.

If we look to the east, we can see the Mississippi River. The young man at the bottom finished his viewing suggestions by saying (and we quote), "You don't need to look east to the Illinois side--there's no shit to see over there." That was followed by nervous laughter by our group.

After our ten minutes at the top, we were instructed to line up by our cubicles for the tram ride back to the bottom.

Most national park films are free, but we paid the $4 extra charge for this one. It told the story of the people that master-minded this engineering feat, and memorialized the others that did the manual labor. The film outlined the process of building the two sides of the arch, and how there was no room for error on October 28, 1965, when the last piece brought them together. The model below freezes that day in time as the last chunk of the arch was waiting to be wedged into place. Denisa held her breath during the film, worrying that the final slice at the top wouldn't fit properly. That's a little ridiculous considering that we had just ridden to the top.

After we finished the indoor displays, we went back outside to enjoy more of this blue-sky-day. We could look straight up to see the tiny windows at the top where we had looked down earlier.

It was busy by now, and we weren't going to get any pictures without crowds at this time of the day.

As we left the arch, we stopped in at the Basilica of St. Louis. Built in 1834, it was the first cathedral west of the Mississippi River. It is now in the shadow of the arch that was completed in 1965.

Known locally simply as the Old Cathedral, the doors are open for visitors to look inside.

We also walked across the street to the green-topped Old Courthouse that we could see from the top of the arch. We would have liked to go inside, but it is closed for renovation. This courthouse's claim to fame is that it held the Dred-Scott trial.

We walked a half-mile deeper into the downtown corridor, in search of the Citygarden Sculpture Park that includes some interesting pieces of art. Denisa posed like Pinocchio . . .

while Mark tried on the head for size.

Mark would have normally climbed up the pedestal to provide a head for the headless pink suit statue, but for once he stayed on the ground.

We made a circle back to Ballpark Village, were the streets are already closed to vehicles in preparation for today's game.

We heard that tickets were very hard to get for this wild-card play-off game, in which the St. Louis Cardinals have to win tonight in order to advance in the march towards the World Series. We peeked in through the gates of Busch Stadium to see it before the 7:30 crowds arrived.

For those not able to get tickets inside the stadium, the game will be shown on this jumbotron in the plaza next door. We're guessing that this will be standing-room-only this evening.

We took the mandatory picture beside the St. Louis logo, wishing the best of luck to the team today.

Spoiler alert: The Cardinals lost the game, and were eliminated in the run for the World Series. But we still had a great time wishing them luck and dreaming for greatness with the rest of the city.

It was hard to give up our good parking spot downtown, but we were ready to make the drive to Forest Park in another part of St. Louis. Larger than Central Park in New York City, this is the home of St. Louis's zoo, children's museum, history museum, science center, and art museum. The really neat thing is that all of that is free! The parking is even free if you're willing to walk a little. We were excited to arrive at the Zootoberfest on this beautiful afternoon.

We've visited quite a few zoos, and we have to say this is one of the best. We enjoyed the grizzly bear, 

and lots of penguins.

Denisa has tried to see puffins several times in the wild with minimal success. We've gone to the coast of Alaska, Newfoundland, Canada, and Maine in search of puffins. So she was glad for these close-up views of puffins here in St. Louis.

She is smiling because she saw lots of puffins here!

You can ask our granddaughter, and she will tell you that Grand-dude's favorite animal is the polar bear. So we had to take this picture of him with the sleeping bear.

We're not sure that we have ever seen one of these guys so clearly and so closely.

Our granddaughter will also tell you that Gram's favorite is the giraffe. So we took these pictures for her.

The St. Louis Zoo has great enclosures that allow for good views without looking through nets and wires. We also think it was such a good day at the zoo because of the nice temperatures so the animals were all out enjoying the weather as well.

They also have an ocean exhibit that has seals swimming right over your head.

We got some great close-ups of these playful animals that seemed to love to interact with the guests.

The zoo included some botanical exhibits, including a collection of orchids.

Then we went inside the butterfly enclosure, where hundreds of lacy butterflies flitted around our heads.

It was a great zoo, and it was hard to imagine that all this was free to everyone everyday!

We would have loved to visit another museum or two in Forest Park. But our legs were just too tired, and it was almost closing time. By the time we got back to our free parking space we had walked nine miles, and we were ready to head out of the city. We were facing some rush hour traffic, and we realized that the route we chose out of St. Louis was taking us through some sketchy sections of town. We couldn't help but think of our Boondocker host's advice to stay out of this crime-filled city. But we made it home safely, and we have to say that we'd do it all again. We had a great day in St. Louis!