The Arch

Hi there!

I thought I'd hop back on here and show you all just a little bit of what we did as we were leaving the needlework market a couple of weeks ago… Mike grew up in St.Louis, so he was excited to visit the city just a bit and hopefully take us down memory lane.. needless to say, Sophie and I were dreading very excited about this, and he glanced over every half-mile or so while we were on the interstate, wondering if he should take this exit or that in order to get to his alma mater, Garfield Elementary School.

"Do you think any of my old teachers still teach there?" he would ask occasionally.

Most likely he was fantasizing about how he would run (in slow motion) through the school yard, waving a bright shining apple over his head like a trophy, and have old Miss Elderpants greet him with open arms and exclaim affectionately, "Mikey! You haven't changed a bit!"

And that's when I'd say, "No, he hasn't; he still talks too much," throwing a heavy wet blanket onto his whole daydream.

Och, it wasn't that bad. We never found Garfield, but we did head toward Jefferson Park, following Mike's lead to the Arch.

Sophie had a pretty bad blister on her foot, so she decided to go barefoot.

The day was incredibly hot and muggy, but the park was still very pretty, which made the long walk enjoyable.

I had no idea that there was a very cool museum under the Arch! I really enjoyed it, and could have spent much longer there… most of these pictures are of quotes I took for my mom, because she loves to read anything related to the pioneering of America…

Mike and I loved the spelling!

These are all excerpts from the diary of William Clark (of Lewis and Clark)…

The last sentence of the following clip was my favorite… I wonder if he was specifically referring to God's creation of what he had been journaling about, or just the natural structure and beauty of everything?

This was a replica general store, which had lots of fun things in there.. repro cookbooks, ladies' housekeeping books, quil and ink sets, and Sophie's favorite, saltwater taffy. (I'm not sure who that lady in the photo is.)

We had to keep an eye on the clock because we yet had 7 hours to drive in front of us, and Sophie had school the next day. So we hurried to the loading station to ride up to the Arch.

Here was the door we were told to stand in front of. It was only about 4 1/2 feet high..

If I'd known that we were going to be crammed into this little pod for roughly 5 uncomfortable minutes, I'm not sure I would have been on board.  By the way, what you see in the photo looks like a toilet seat, but it's not.. its just the back of one of the tiny seats available to sit on. There were 5 seats per unit, situated in a very tight  circle…

And to add to the discomfort of the tight quarters, Mikey had his chatterbox turned on, all the way to the top.

I will admit though, it was a pretty neat sight up there. 🙂

And it will be our secret that while we were up there, I may have spotted Garfield. 😉