St.Louis - Missouri! This is the Gateway arch. This is the biggest National Monument in the United States and is the gateway from the east to the west. It's enormous presence in the parkway just above the Mississippi River was breathtakingly stunning! Underground, below the arch is a museum and we found an elevator that could take us up inside the actual arch to the view area at the very top for 630 foot views over St. Louis.....aagghhh!
It was 110 degrees there that day (approx 43 Celsius) - HOT! So of course... we decided to take a paddle boat cruise up the Mississippi river. It was still a little in flood to where the water level normally sits, 13ft above that, with some carparks still under water but it was still very beautiful.
Back to the motel pool for cooling off. Next day - Scoop's best day in the States so far, would have been happy to go home, if he had to. A Budweiser tour in the morning (with free beer). In one of the pictures you can see a vat, which, if Scoop had a beer, every hour, every day, it would take him 127 years to finish one vat! Then off to the St.Louis Rams NFL Training camp. I must admit being up this close to the NFL players was kind of cool......OK I'll admit it - it was AWESOME! One of the players even gave Jackson his playing glove at the end of the session.
At the end of our time in Missouri, we headed for Kansas City (home to the Wizard of Oz, Hallmark cards and Crayola crayons). Pritch, we haven't seen you yet! Went downtown and found a small amount of shops and a splash pad.
Kids played around most of the afternoon in the water. Another HOT day - 105 degrees F.
Left Kansas City in search of a couple more State signs - Iowa and Nebraska (states #23 and #24, half way in the state sign journey). Took a big detour on the way up the Interstate to Iowa as they had a lot of flood water still laying around - see pics. Hard to believe with the way the weather is- has been over 35 degrees every day for the last 10 days in the Mid West.
Were meant to stay up in Nebraska for the night, however we decided to drive back into Kansas as we had seen more than our fair share of corn for the day! The mid west apparently supplies over 3/4 of the world's corn - yes I would believe it!
On our way to Oklahoma City - Oklahoma tomorrow (#25) for a 3 night stop over.
Hope all our readers are keeping well. Stay safe.
Team Connor USA. XOXOXO
Ben was blown away by the fact that you got so close to the players and got their autographs! Like the arch....that's very different. Is it lit up at nighttime?
ReplyDeleteYes, the arch is lit at night. For festivities, they do fireworks above the arch, which is really neat to see. The company I work for has a grain elevator right across the river, which is a great place to watch them, I guess. I have never been to the arch and will get my first chance in mid September -- wish I could have caught up with the Connors for that!
ReplyDeleteBecky in Minnesota