Gateway Arch We continued traveling east on I-70 to St. Louis. Here we visited the Jefferson Memorial Park, better known as the Gateway Arch to the West. Of course, St. Louis was the gateway to the West for many years, when the primary means of travel was originally the Missouri river, then the wagon train. It’s the Jefferson memorial because he completed the Louisiana purchase and commissioned the Louis and Clark expedition. We watched the National Geographic special on this expedition while we were there.
With the advent of the railroad, the gateway to the West moved to Chicago, because the trains went west from there, crossing the Mississippi at Rock Island, Illinois. St. Louis to regain its status decided to build a bridge across the Mississippi. The Eads bridge still stands today, at the time it was a fairly new concept, a cantilevered bridge, with 3 huge spans across the river. You can get a good view of the bridge and the entire downtown area of St. Louis from the top of the arch. To get there, we took these claustrophobic tram cars, each of which sits 5 people. Mary closed here eyes as went up. When we were ready to go down, we had a ‘red alert’. The tram we were planning to use stopped part way up. They finally made it to the top, but we were asked to use the North tram as they inspected the South tram for problems. This really increased Mary’s confidence in the system.
We camped in a beautiful National Forest campground with electricity that evening. We asked for a restaurant for dinner and went to a tavern in Leopold, Indiana about 5 miles from our campground. Since it was Friday night, the place was packed with locals out for the evening. (The ribs were very good.)
