St. Louis....

Friday…I got on the road around 10 am and settled in for the long haul to St. Louis. The first couple of hours were routine…got through Atlanta ok…and headed for Tennessee. That is where it turned sour and the rain started coming down in sheets. I was doing 35 mph on the freeway for almost an hour…. good thing I was not in a hurry. After the rain subsided I cruised the rest of the way at about 60mph. The Turtle seems to like that speed she cruises well in overdrive at that speed. She got really good mileage at 16 mpg (gas stop in Tenn $3.22/gal , in Ill $3.39/gal)…..I overnighted at a rest stop in Illinois about 35 miles outside of St. Louis. I didn’t sleep so well with all the strange noises and new bed etc.

Saturday…. Got up and moving around 7am local time and made the short drive in to St. Louis. You can see the Arch from miles away it is very impressive, as is the Mississippi River (that thing is wide.) First stop the Jefferson Gateway Park (the Arch silly) it is located right on the river and commemorates the western expansion of the US otherwise known as the Louisiana Purchase. They have a free museum that covers Lewis & Clark’s exploration westward….the only interesting thing about it is its location………underground below the arch…..you could also pay to see a movie or ride the tram inside the arch. Being on a budget I decided against both. The park above with the Arch is where I spent the lion share of the time taking photos and people watching. This thing is huge. For those of you who have never been each of its three sides is 57 feet wide at the base and 17 feet at the top and it stands 630 feet tall. There were all kinds of photo ops to be had with lots of interesting angles and light and shadow play….you can see my shots in the slide show over hereà
I even got the obligatory tourist shot with me standing by the arch. The funny thing is most of the people who were taking their pics next to the arch would stand right next to the widest part and snap their shot, which looked like them standing next to a stainless steel wall (they could have been anywhere…no context) but anyway enough photo snobbery. The rest of the time I sat around people watching. It was a good place for that. It was fairly crowded but from what the ranger told me it was early in the season. Next stop was neighborhood a few miles south of town called Soulard. It had two main attractions….the local farmer’s market and the Budweiser Brewery (I know you’ll are shocked that I wanted to check out the brewery). Can anybody say FREE BEER!!!!
The farmer’s market was what you would expect. A bunch of stalls with people selling fruits, veggies, and various meats. I picked up some apples, cucumbers, avocados, a pineapple, and chicken breasts. They were all very fresh and really cheap. The neighborhood had a certain bohemian quality to it. Old brick factory buildings converted to condos with trendy restaurants and hip overpriced clothing stores on the street level. Buskers strummed their guitars and violins on the street in expectation of coinage from passers by. The pedestrian traffic was brisk and the day was pleasant so the buskers did a fair business. A few blocks down the street a bastion of beer rose from the factories and industrial buildings. The Budweiser factory occupied at least half a dozen city blocks with turn of the century school buildings; opulent carriage houses come Clydesdale’s stables, and state of the art production buildings. Tour began with the horses and their accommodations…. when I die I want to come back as a Budweiser Clydesdale…. from there it moved through several different production facilities. The brew house reminded me of an opulent hotel with mission control attached to it (see the pics). After an hour and a half, of part history lesson and part brewery science, the tour ended at the hospitality room for the aforementioned FREE BEER…you were allowed two glasses of any beer they produced…. I chose the Stella Atrois…(no I am not a beer snob). …But it was free so why not get the good stuff. When you leave the hospitality room you have to make a trip through the gift shop where you can find anything you can imagine emblazoned with a Budweiser logo of some kind or another.

Next I decided to find my campground and get settled for the next couple of days. I needed a shower and a nap (that beer tour really zapped me). The campground proved a little difficult to find because they have a 10-mile section of the freeway torn up and I mean completely torn up…thank god for GPS…the campground was only 20 miles away but it took me almost 2 hours to get there. Once there I settled in, shower up, and kicked back to watch a little Final Four Bball. The generator works great and practically sips gas (6 hours on a 1 gallon tank).

Sunday……..Race Day!!! What else can I say? Gotta watch my NASCAR…. took a nap and chilled. I did discover an issue with my secondary battery system. The inverter was not charging the system. So instead of trying to repair a 25 year old inverter I decided to add a trickle charger to the system…. turns out the battery is bad. I will have to find a Wal-mart and swap it out (it is only 4 months old).

Monday…Went to an area on the west side of town called Forrest Park. This park had a golf course, history museum, fine art museum, zoo, ball fields, tennis stadium, visitor’s center, and a lake with room to spare. I wanted to check out the zoo and the art museum but, as luck would have it, only the zoo was open on Monday. Good news, it was free. bad news, you get what you pay for…. ok it wasn’t that bad but a lot of the exhibits were empty or the animals were not coming out to play…..got to watch the chimps have loads of fun with their own excrements….mmmm who’s ready for lunch? I haven’t been to a zoo since grade school, so it was interesting to see the animals again. I could have lived with out the smell though. While wondering around the elaborately constructed fake trees and rocks, I began to question whether or not it was humane to keep animals in captivity? I know some of them would have gone extinct if it were not for the zoo…but if we had not destroyed their natural habitat to begin with would they have needed saving? Are the zoos a way to assuage our guilt? Something to think about…..don’t get me wrong I am not a tree hugger by any means…but after seeing the bored affectations and confining cages decorated to look like the animals’ “habitat” I wonder if they would not be better off extinct?

Next stop “The Loop”…. billed a one of the 10 best streets in America. It was a 4-block section of Delmar Blvd filled with shops and eateries to tempt all comers. Do I sound a bit sarcastic? Lets just say it was over sold and it under delivered. It was simply like any commercial street in any major city filled with overpriced shops, panhandlers, and restaurants serving “Nuevo” cuisine. Needless to say I skipped the haute cuisine and settle for a little “New York” style pizza. Not bad considering I was in St. Louis.

Next stop KC for some more culture and hopefully some really good BBQ….what? A man has got to eat……

Later Brett