Better than the Golden Arches.

The Gateway Arch in St. Louis is way better than the Golden Arches. It is so neat. You can go inside of it!!!

You ride this little elevator pod up the arch to the center where you can look outside. In the base of the arch (actually called the Jefferson Memorial Gateway Arch of St. Louis) has 2 museum displays:

One is about westward expansion, Louis and Clark and the Louisiana Purchase, hence the historical significance of St. Louis as a major cross-roads in westward expansion and intra-national commerce.

The second is to the construction and design of the arch. Its exterior is 100% stainless steel so it never rusts and doesn't need painting ... until taggers and graffiti artists started to defile it and now it takes quite a bit of money to maintain it. Grrrrrrr.

It's 630 feet up in the air and you can see all of St. Louis, including the courthouse where the Dred Scott decision was handed down!

We were very fortunate in that the day we visited, the parking structures and park surrounding the Arch had just been cleaned up. Just the week before, it had been partially submerged with the flood waters of the Mississippi River.

P.S. - The Mississippi River, while amazing, is absolutely ugly. It is a big brown river. Murky and very dirty looking. But it doesn't smell, so I assume the water is actually clean, but there's no way I'd ever get in that water. I hear there are snapping turtles.

BUDWEISER!

Then we went on the free tour of the St. Louis Anheiser-Busch brewery - the largest of the 12 North American Anheiser-Busch breweries. It was an OK tour. It had the potential to be great, with lots of history and explanation, but unfortunately the tour-guides (and patrons) weren't really interested in the science of brewing or the history of the company. So it was really surface level.

To appease us, they gave us 2 free beers at the end of the tour!

Also, this was our most uncomfortable day thus far in the trip. It was 98 with very, very high humidity. Yuck. At one point on the tour, we entered brewing room that was 20 degrees hotter than the outside temperature because of the process the beer was entering. Needless to say, I had some gnarly sweat rings.

After our tour, we returned to the motorhome and headed to Kansas City, MO.