West of the Mississippi

I really enjoyed our drive through Missouri and the Ozarks. Very pretty, hilly and green with lots of interesting stops. Since we are ending our trip by meeting up with the boy scout troop in Gettysburg PA we decided it would be a good idea to work in some Civil War history along the way. Missouri and Oklahoma have many National Battlefields open to the public, and since we were driving right past and needed a break we stopped at Wilson's Creek National Battlefield.

Wilson's Creek was the first Civil War battle fought west of the Mississippi and also where the first General for the Northern Army to loose his life died. Nathaniel Lyon lost his life on Bloody Hill on August 10, 1861. The battle was fought on the Ray family farm, destroying the families corn field and crops. Their house was then used as a Confederate hospital, further depleting any supplies and food they had stored for the coming winter season. The Ray family, prosperous farmers and the town postmaster, went from wealthy to broke in only 6 hours that day, and never recovered. While the Confederacy won this battle, in the end Missouri remained under Union control.

The National Park Service does a great job of keeping places like this as natural and historically accurate as possible. The Ray house has been preserved and is open to the public, with a Park Service employee there to give tours and answer questions. We also spent a lot of time just walking around the grounds and the battlefield. Committed to conservation, I loved this drinking fountain in the interpretative center.

A place just to refill a water bottle!! We are trying very hard to conserve and not create more trash as we take this trip and are finding that many campgrounds out this way have no recycling available, so it was nice to be able to refill our reusable water bottles along the way. I'm really hoping as we move further west we are able to stay at some greener campgrounds.

St. Louis

When we started planning this trip a couple of years ago and were looking at places we wanted to visit St. Louis wasn't even on our radar. This city was picked by the boys as they had learned in school that St. Louis is “The Gateway to the West” and they decided that our journey really should begin here. They were right, it was an excellent place to start. Driving through the cornfields of Indiana and Illinois the land is flat and you can see for miles. The boys spotted the Gateway Arch when we were still several miles away on the highway and were thrilled to find that it really does lead you right into the city of St. Louis.

We had reservations at the Casino QueenRV Park in East St. Louis Illinois, directly across the Mississippi River from the Gateway Arch. While the park itself was not much more than a giant asphalt parking lot with a small playground, the view of the arch from almost every spot was spectacular. This park was also located within a short walk to a Metro Link station and the arch was just one stop away, which allowed us to leave the King parked and use public transportation to get around.

The Jefferson National ExpansionMemorial is home not only to the Gateway Arch, but also to the Museum of Westward Expansion which contains artifacts from the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition, through the Dred Scott Case. There are also a number of Native American artifacts including a life sized tipi. It's a nice museum, but the boys went through it fairly quickly.

After the museum we headed into one of the theaters to watch “Monument to the Dream,” a short film about how the monument was made. Designed by Eero Saarinen, the same architect who designed Kleinhans Music Hall in our hometown, it is the tallest man made monument (at 630 feet) in the country. Construction took 2 ½ years to complete and the arch opened to the public June 10, 1967.

Next, we headed for the tram to take a ride to the top! Luckily, each tram car holds 5 people, so we were all able to ride up together. The cars are pretty small, kinda noisy, and clank from side to side as you ascend through the legs of the arch. There are several observation windows at the top and the view is spectacular! On a clear day you can see for miles in any direction and the boys loved picking out the various buildings and trying to find the King in the RV park across the river. We took our time, looking out all the windows in each direction, taking tons of pictures.

The tram ride down from the top of the arch seemed to go much faster. We had time for a quick snack before heading into another movie, this one about Lewis and Clark and their expedition into the new territory acquired through the Louisiana Purchase. A very well made movie, it's hard to imagine such a journey across the Rocky Mountains and all the way to the Pacific Ocean without maps or roads to help guide you there.

Finally, some thoughts on the city of St. Louis itself. It was totally not what I expected, but did remind me in many ways of home. I was surprised to find a waterfront city, in it's heyday a boom town, with no recreational boating and very little public waterfront access. When asked, we were told that this section of the Mississippi is too narrow for recreational watercraft and is also a commercially busy shipping lane. All day long we noticed one barge after another being pushed up or down the river. Apparently, recreational boating is available several miles north, in a wider section of the river that has been dammed up. Also, as you can see from the pictures, while the city of St. Louis is prominent on one side of the river, with it's shops, museums, restaurants and attractions, the Illinois side of the river is devoid of things to do, save for the one casino where we were staying. It's filled with open fields and heavy industry and brought to mind the US and Canada, separated by Niagara Falls and the Niagara River.  While Buffalo's waterfront does offer several recreational opportunities, there's still room for so much more improvement, and St. Louis seems to be in the same boat.

Be Careful What You Wish For

Remember a few posts back...when I mentioned the insane number of vehicles in the driveway in the hopes that the husband would let go of a few of them. Well, we're down a vehicle...but not exactly in the way I was hoping. The husband and the teen were involved in an accident last week. I'm extremely grateful that no one in either vehicle was seriously injured, but we are down one big blue truck for the foreseeable future. They were on their way to pick up supplies at the marine store to finish building the teen's boat when they were hit...oh, the irony.

Repairs to the “King of the Road's” engine are complete and it's running very well. I think there is a good chance we'll make it to Maine problem free in a couple of weeks! Good news, with the husband out of town for work and me the single parent of 3 boys until then...I'll be picking out my lobster wines and loading them up before we leave!

The teen has learned quite a bit about spark plugs, oil changes and alternator belt adjustments:

He's actually pretty good at problem solving and has been a big help. But his favorite thing to do is start it up when it's time to test it out:

He better not get too comfortable in that seat...I've got 3 years left until I have to teach him to drive and I have no intention of rushing it!

We've also started to plan out our trip for next summer! I totally stole this idea from our Oswego friends because it looked like a super fun way to involve the boys in the planning stages:

We bought a great big map of the United States that includes all the capitol cities and National Parks. I mounted the map on a foam board, hung it on the wall, and let them stick map pins in wherever they want to go. It is kinda helping us to map out a route as we need to start making some reservations VERY soon. Apparently, many National Parks fill up nearly a year in advance. We've also decided to head south first, working our way toward the Grand Canyon, up the west coast, then back home across the northern states. At the moment there are way more pins and places marked than we will be able to see on this trip, so trips down the east coast and into Canada may be planned for the future. We can't wait to get started!!