Wednesday morning started out a bit disappointing; we headed to nearby “Route 66 State Park” to learn more about The Mother Road…but when we arrived, the sign on the visitor’s center door said they were closed for repairs. Oh well…I’m just glad it was only about a 10-minute drive from the campground! We did get to see the remnants of a Route 66 bridge over the Meramec River and a neon sign that once brought Route 66 travelers to a local café. At this point, there wasn’t enough time to do anything else before our afternoon plans, so we just relaxed at the campground which I suppose is okay once in a while!

There was rain on-and-off throughout the day, but fortunately it didn’t impact our 1pm tour at the Frank Lloyd Wright house in Ebsworth Park. It’s from later in his career, when he was trying to design homes that ‘average’ people could afford, a style he called “Usonian”. This particular home was built by Russell and Ruth Kraus, and they lived there until selling the house to a non-profit that was started to preserve the home…so it’s very much in original condition and never had to undergo extensive renovations. Usonian homes are built around shapes, and for this house, it’s a parallelogram. The only right angles in the house are in the bathroom….not even used for the beds! The home is constructed from brick, concrete, and red cypress wood. There is stained glass in the home, which is not typical for Usonian homes (because of the need to keep costs down), but the owner was a stained glass artist, so he designed and created (with FLW’s approval) the stained glass for the home. The furniture is original and is interesting to say the least! FLW’s favorite color, “Cherokee Red”, appears throughout the home. The house sits on land that is technically a county park, and is set in a grove of persimmon trees. It was an interesting contrast to most of the other FLW homes we’ve seen which were much more extravagant and designed for wealthy home owners, and the persistent use of parallelograms was fascinating!

From there, we decided to check out the Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site. The site features White Haven, the home where he met his wife, Julia Dent (it was her family’s home), and where the couple lived for many years with their four children. There was a short movie which gave a really nice overview of his time in the military, his pivotal role in the Civil War and Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, and his two terms as President. It was particularly interesting to learn how much he worked toward civil rights after the Civil War.

Adjacent to the National Historic Site is “Grant’s Farm” which is where Anheuser-Busch keep their famous Clydesdales. We were able to catch a distant glimpse of some of them as we drove by, but it was too late in the day to stop and tour the farm.

A random observation in St. Louis…I saw a restaurant sign that looked very familiar, but said “St. Louis Bread Co.”…I googled it, and sure enough, it was the Panera Bread logo. Turns out Panera started as St. Louis Bread Co. and was re-branded everywhere except in St. Louis. So it’s the same menu, same logo, just a different name there! Interesting!

Thursday was a long but amazing day, and happened to be our 27th wedding anniversary! We started at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis. I had seen some reviews & photos online that were so impressive that we had to see for ourselves…and it was incredible. The church houses one of the world’s largest collections of mosaics with over 41 million individual tiles. Every area of the basilica is unique and the colors are so vibrant and impressive. I was just awestruck. While I haven’t seen too many of the famous churches in Europe, I have to believe this ranks among the most beautiful.

Our next stop was actually across the Mississippi River, back in Illinois. In East St. Louis, there is a viewing platform that provides a fantastic view of the Gateway Arch and the St. Louis skyline. We spent a few minutes there enjoying the view and taking photos. The park where it’s located also has a geyser (basically a tall fountain) but it wasn’t going to erupt for a while, so we didn’t stick around!

We headed back into St. Louis, parked the truck (full-size pickup trucks are a lot of fun in city parking garages, FYI!), and grabbed lunch at a local place, Pickles Deli. From there, it was a short walk to the Gateway Arch, by way of the Old Courthouse. The courthouse is part of the Gateway Arch National Park and is undergoing massive renovations. It’s where the first two trials in the Dred Scott case were held, before the case went to the Supreme Court.

On to the Arch. It’s positioned in a large 62-acre park that is beautifully landscaped and overlooks the Mississippi River. We were pleasantly surprised at the park and how it brings it a little closer to feeling like a “national park” (it’s so hard to think about a man-made structure being a National Park vs. a National Monument!). It’s difficult to comprehend the sheer size of the arch until you see it and stand next to it and under it. I was blown away. I knew it would be massive, but I just couldn’t believe it once I was there. It is the tallest monument in the country at 630 feet tall (and 630 feet wide at the base!) and is 2^nd in the world, behind only the Eiffel Tower. And the steel exterior catches the sunlight so beautifully. We walked around the base of the arch to take it all in, and then headed inside.

There is a museum all about Westward expansion and the key role St. Louis played for Lewis & Clark and all the westward-heading “trails” that originated in the St. Louis area. There’s an interesting movie that tells the story of building the arch – so wonderful that people thought to document it back in the 1960s! It is truly an engineering marvel and pretty amazing that it only took 2.5 years to build. The original design was chosen in a contest in 1947, but construction didn’t start until 1963 as they worked through how they would actually construct this beautiful design.

And, perhaps most importantly, there are the North and South trams that take you to the top of the arch. It’s a 4-minute ride up in a VERY small pod that will technically hold up to five people, but ours was pretty full with four people!. You’re allowed ten minutes at the top – it’s not a large area (a maximum of 40 people would be there at any given time) and has small rectangular windows to look out to the West over St. Louis and to the East over Illinois. It was a clear day, so we could see about 30 miles. Given all the smoke from Canadian wildfires, we were really fortunate to have a clear day for this!

The other two people in our pod were from Kansas City, so we chatted about football (they were Chiefs fans, naturally, but had nothing but good things to say about Josh Allen and the Bills!) and learned that they were also camping at the same KOA as us. Small world! If you’re claustrophobic, this would not be a fun four minutes (but it’s only three minutes to return to the base, so that’s a plus). As you ride up/down, you can see the 1,076 steps in the arch which makes you grateful for the very small pod you’re riding in!

We stopped at the Arch café and tried some local frozen custard, Ted Drewes (not bad but still not as good as Abbott’s in Rochester!) and then headed back out to see the Arch one more time in the afternoon sun. Still ginormous, still beautiful. It’s not like any other National Park we’ve ever been to, but it is awesome!

From there, we drove to the Central Public Library which is perfectly nice outside, but is really impressive inside! The ceilings are unique in each room of the library, and each is a nod to a famous ceiling somewhere in the world. I would love to take a guided tour to learn more about that, but there weren’t any happening during our visit.

Our next stop was Forest Park which hosted the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair and the 1904 Summer Olympics. The park is home to the St. Louis Zoo and four museums. We only saw a small fraction of the 1,300 acres, but it’s a gorgeous urban park.

We finished our St. Louis adventure at a local BBQ restaurant in a cute little neighborhood near Washington University of St. Louis. Delicious anniversary dinner!

Overall, we were so impressed with St. Louis! Everything we did was wonderful, and the city has so much to offer. We’ll be back for sure, as there are several items still on our list that we didn’t have time for this week! If you have the chance to visit, we HIGHLY recommend it! It was just one big WOW and I’m still in awe of all the beauty, the engineering, the architecture…everything we saw.

We have a one-week break ahead, and then we’re heading north into Wisconsin! See you then!