IT WAS A SPRING DAY IN ST. LOUIS

Easter weekend, Don and I decided to drive over to St. Louis to go to the annual Easter car show in Forest Park.  When I say "...decided to drive over," that makes it sound like we got in the car and thirty minutes or an hour later, we were crossing the Mississippi River into the city.  It was, actually, about a 3-1/2-hour drive, and we left Jasper at 9:30 a.m. Saturday morning in this:

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Our spirits were not dampened, though, because we had been needing a little getaway, and as we sloshed our way through Indiana and into Illinois, the sun peeked through a few times.  

I had never been to the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.  That is sort of an embarrassing thing to admit, having lived within about three hours of that awesome landmark for most of my fifty-three years.  I have driven past it on the freeway numerous times, always on my way to somewhere else, never with the time to enjoy that almost mind boggling feat of engineering.  

Having driven through the dark and stormy morning, my first close encounter with the Gateway Arch, on foot, at least, was this:

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Look at that blue sky on this Easter Eve afternoon that met us in St. Louis!

Now, of course, Don and I both were pretty excited about the idea of taking the tram to the top where we could look out over our land, but we were a little disappointed to find out that by the time we arrived, about 12:30 p.m., the tram was already sold out for the day.  I guess I should have realized things were not going to go as planned when the security people pulled me aside and confiscated my keychain-sized pepper spray. Imagine my sad face here.  

But always the troopers, we went to see a fantastic documentary on the IMAX screen inside the Arch's foundation, about Lewis and Clark.  I learned all kinds of interesting things I had never known about the expedition.  

So, as close as we got to the top of the arch was when I used my zoom and took this shot once we were back outside:

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Yes, those are windows up there, and I was shooting blindly.  Maybe I wasn't so disappointed I missed the ride up there!


We then spent a little time strolling along the Mighty Mississippi.  She was high, and there were places on the road we took to the arch that probably had been totally underwater a week earlier, so we planned our trip perfectly.  Here's a shot of the river, and then the next one is a photo of the gorgeous young redwoods found all throughout the park and along the river.

 Finally, the sun began to slide to the west, and we were ready to head out to the Forest Park area and get checked into our hotel, have a good meal, and chill out the rest of the evening, which was exactly what we did.  The sun was glinting off the west side of the arch as we made our way to the parking lot, satisfied, hungry, and looking forward to the next day when we were going to the big car show!