Day 3

October 14 2009 Wednesday

We drove to St Louis today. Woke up later than usual thinking Tim would accompany us, but he decided not to. He has work tomorrow and doesn’t feel like the extra drive, plus he also has to drive back since he is not coming to Oregon with us. So we left on our own and stopped at the Illinois welcome center for a map. (we had a map for every state on the way except Illinois) Last night Mom looked up a website called Roadside Americana which lists all sorts of interesting places to stop. One of them was the world’s largest ketchup bottle. We took a slight detour to go see it. The ketchup bottle is actually just a water tower painted to resemble a ketchup bottle; it does not contain any real ketchup. I wonder if there is a giant mayonnaise and mustard bottle? We continued on our way and arrived in St Louis. We parked at the arch which cost $6. I thought you could drive under the arch, but I guess not. We went to the arch museum which is underground. It was all about the Lewis and Clark expedition up the Missouri river. We rode to the top of the arch in little elevator bubbles and looked out over St Louis from the tiny windows at the top. The passengers that rode up with us in the bubble were from Tennessee. We compared notes on how cold it was in our hometowns.
The ranger at the Lewis and Clark museum was very friendly. Many of the exhibits and pictures on display had no information describing what they were. We talked to the ranger about this and he said they had a book many years ago explaining all the exhibits, but for some reason the giftshop never reprinted it. He showed us his well used copy. Apparently the curator expects museum patrons to be intelligent and know it all themselves, which makes the museum rather pointless. Why go to a museum if you already know what its about? This particular ranger was very chatty and recommended us some great restaurants. He also said we have to try the fried ravioli – it’s a St Louis classic that isn’t very common in the rest of the world. It was really cold out so we voted against the picnic lunch. (We brought food for lunches so we could avoid spending extra money by only eating out one meal a day) We decided to try the Italian restaurant – Charlies. We walked over since it wasn’t very far. Loved the food! It was amazing! Yummy and very garlicky! A bit pricey but delicious!
The scenery in Illinois and Missouri is very beautiful - full fall colors. The trees are green, yellow, orange, brown, red and all shades in between. Even the grass is colorful! The sunlight is very thin here. I packed away my sunglasses, might not need them for a while. After lunch we walked around downtown, tried to go see the toy museum but they were closed. The dog museum and Jefferson national monument were on the wrong side of town; by the time we got back to the car and thought of driving over they were closed. We are now headed to a hotel just past the city where we made reservations last night. The roads out here have lots of cracks in them – caused by expanding and contracting of the ice in winter. Most of the cracks are precut so they can control where it cracks.