A Two Day Vacation

So, I gotta say, I am pooped! A whirlwind 2 day vacation to St. Louis wore me out!
We went on the Blues Cruise.

You get to go for a little trip up the Mighty Missip, and then return after an evening of dancing and a great band and some beverages too.

We had such fun! We ran inot some dear ladies that we met there last year! Who knew???!

Here's jean and Me & Hubs and our pal Mary.

Here's Dear Son and Jean on board with the arch in the background...what? You can't see the arch, well just trust me on this one.
Before we boarded we went to the Hwy 61 Roadhouse for Supper. The retaurant was featured on the Food Network show Diners, Drive Ins & Dives so we had to try it out.

We sat outside on the patio, after checking out the eclectic decor inside

Service was slow, we had a new guy, too bad because the food was really good.  Dan ordered a salad and the Jambalaya and  a side of Mac & Cheese, The mac was nothing special at all, but the bleu cheese dressing I am told, was outstanding!

Son had a BBQ Bacon Burger, look at that, it's lovely isn't it? Son said it was the 2nd best burger he has EVER HAD! That's pretty high praise!

I had 1/2 slab of ribs and so did jean. It was delicious. I loved the sauce, such a nice flavor, and BONUS Bones for the dogs! I  also had the waffle fries, they were very good, but cold, and the baked beans which were good too. Not as good as some others I have had but they were good enough to eat and the sides were all really big, so there was a lot of food. I would recommend eating at the Hwy 61 Roadhouse. It was on a Thursday, so it wasn't crowded at all, but the poor service was a sad thing. It's hard to be the new server, but he made little to no effort to be a good server in addition to being slow.

I still can't get enough of the amazing arch. I think I could take pictures of it all day!

Welcome to the Top

So here we are!

It was a cloudy day, and we did get caught in a down pour when we were walking back to the hotel, but what a cool visit! Down the ramp you see behind Hubs and through the security detectors into the lower level to see the museum of westward expansion, and buy tickets to the top! We knew there were stairs so Hubs had to stay behind. I got my ticket ($10) and went to the line to wait a few minutes. The park employees are very thorough, and guide the correct number of people into each area to board the cars to go up.There are displays and photos of the construction along the way too.

 Behind each of these numbered doors is a cozy little car that fits 5 people in a very snug seating arrangement.

These folks just got done and are leaving the area-see the person on the right side of the photo in the yellow shirt? they are climbing aboard their car to go up. The red boxes above the doors are TVs that show a short video about the construction of the arch to pass the time while waiting. 

Here you can see how "cozy" the pods are, I took this right before I had to board with my new "friends"!




There are no windows on the way up so it's a lot like taking an elevator, slower though. It takes 4 minutes to go up and 3 minutes to come down. The car ride is smooth and when it gets to the curve of the arch it does a little jog, step, jog, step as it moves on.

 This is the view out the East side of the top-the Mississippi River.

And here's the West side view-St. Louis. That tan building next to the highway is our hotel, the Hyatt Regency.

 See there's the Cardinal's Stadium.

 The signs by the windows tell you it's the very top! You can see there's a pretty good group of people looking around. You can stay as long as you want, then prepare to catch the next ride down.

This is the group of folks waiting to go down. You need to stand to the right side, on the yellow section of the steps to stay out of the way of the getting out of the cars. I liked the sign at the top of the steps when you get out of the car. It's lit up here, so you can't see it in the picture, but it says Welcome to the Top.

 Here's a short video I tried to take of the car going down. I was in with a family and we were chatting as we went, you can see the inside walls of the arch and the stairs used by maintenance workers.

When we got done it was pouring rain! So we spent a little extra time at the Museum of the Westward Expansion. It details the Louis & Clark Expedtion.

 These manikins or models or whatever you call them, talk and move-it's pretty cool.

 The museum is free so you can hang around there as long as you like.

This is a pretty cool wall mural-it's made to look like it all carved stone but it's actually a flat painting. Well except for the arch model part.

There;s also a little candy/snack shop and the souvenir store too. We didn't buy any thing at the souvenir shop because we couldn't find anything in there that was made in the USA. SO the rain had pretty much stopped so we thought we would be able to make it to the hotel fairly dry-boy were we wrong!!