630 Feet Up

 U.S. Road Trip 2013

Part Two

We camped our first night at Eldon Hazlet State Park in western Illinois about 45 minutes from St. Louis. We rolled into the campground at about nine Friday night and by ten we were trying to go to sleep in the humid heat. No one used their sleeping bags for covering that night.

Our site was right on the lake and so we woke up to beautiful shining water just yards away.

We were on our way to the Arch by eight that morning, and it was a magnificent sight from a distance!

The Gateway Arch sits just on top of the Thomas Jefferson Westward Expansion Memorial, an underground museum commemorating the exploration and settlement of the west. Built for the world's fair, it stands as a gateway to the west.

Thomas Jefferson, the architect of a great many things, finalized the Louisiana purchase and sent the Corps of Discovery west looking for a good route across the continent. He opened the west to an American presence. It was so meaningful to stand in front of Mr. Jefferson's likeness in the Arch's underground museum and make connections with all that we've learned in Charlottesville about Jefferson, Lewis, and Clark.

Only as I was standing there in the museum did I realize the perfection of starting here on our trip. Dozens of six-foot photographs of the western landscape lined one wall of the main exhibit. Another side of the museum has a display of native American leaders who negotiated interactions with American settlers. Landscape textures and native tribes of our nation's pasts were represented within those walls.  It seems now as if we were given a glimpse of the land we were about to see. 

The museum is full of modes of transportation used in the westward expansion. I love this wagon, the steamship wheel, a stagecoach, and a primitive handcart.

Weeks before our trip, I had reserved tickets to ride to the top of the Arch, but we were a little nervous (as E is demonstrating with his patented half cross-eyed smile) to find out what was behind the sliding doors as we waited our turn.  

Phew. Just a claustrophobia-inducing tiny pod. It took four minutes to get the top in this thing.

But once up there, we felt like we could see at least two states away. We had awesome views of St. Louis down below.

Here I am only slightly annoyed (but trying to hide it) that A kept kissing me inside of looking at the camera for a photo. In full disclosure, this isn't the last moment of the trip that I look back on saying "relax, Liz, lighten up."

Once outside we posed a few more times before heading west to Oklahoma. I'm glad we didn't miss the opportunities to go into the museum and up inside the Arch.