May 20th - St. Louis, Missouri

Apparently a cold front had come thru during the night because the morning dawned crisp and clear. Altho it was a little cold sitting outside for breakfast (cold cereal might not have been the best choice for the meal!), we were glad to have relief from the damp, muggy weather of the last few days. We had planned to do a Lewis & Clark commemorative walk today, but the starting point was closed on Tuesdays so we opted to do the Volksmarch in St. Louis instead. That walk was only about 30 miles south from our campground and had the added advantage of being a Route 66 commemorative walk for the Missouri section.

We drove south along the Great River Road to Grafton and Alton Illinois, and it was a beautiful drive. The road runs directly beside the confluence of the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers and just below a palisade of sculpted limestone cliffs. These cliffs have been carved by centuries of erosion into graceful promontories of light yellow/beige layers of rock that reminded me somewhat of the Dolomite Mountains in northern Italy. If you drive this route, try to do it in the late afternoon as the sun will be directly lighting the cliffs. You will also get a better view if you drive north to south as that puts you on the outer edge (river side) of the 4-lane road and your view will not be blocked by the roadside trees.

Along the way we also saw several caves, some with bats flitting in and out, and one large cliff painting of a fantastic dragon-like creature called the Piasa Monster. This cliff painting seems to be a modern reconstruction of a very old original painting, which was reported in the journals of Marquette and Joliet when they explored this area in the mid-1600s. I did have to wonder who was taking the time and effort to paint and maintain the modern version.

We crossed over the Mississippi on a very graceful suspension bridge and worked our way south to downtown St. Louis. Taking a route thru a residential section was, we found out, a big mistake as the city has placed stop signs at literally every intersection. Stopping at the end of every block was quite frustrating and I recalled how many years ago my friend from St. Louis had described a “St. Louis stop” that consisted of slowing down but rolling thru an intersection in second gear without really stopping. With this kind of frustration I could understand why the St. Louis drivers would start to do that in self-defense.

The starting point for the St. Louis walk was a Hampton Inn that fortunately provided free parking. But once again I saw signs warning patrons to “remove all valuables from cars” that gave me some pause in leaving our pickup truck with the bed full of camping gear sitting there for several hours. As it turned out, nothing was touched and I needn’t have worried.

The walking route for the Volksmarch runs east from the Hampton Inn over a bridge thru a park commemorating the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. The park features a fountain with bronze statues of mermaids and nymphs that were created by a student of Rodin (e.g. “Burghers of Calais”, “The Thinker”, etc.) and very much reminded me of Rodin’s sculptural style. These beautifully done figures are cavorting and gamboling about the fountain waters in a rather playful fashion. All of this is apparently intended to symbolize the “marriage” of the two rivers—I’m not sure how well I “got it”, simple and unsophisticated soul that I am, but it certainly was a cheerful sculpture.

From the fountain we diverted north past the buildings for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Globe newspapers, and then continued east to the riverfront. All along the way we were tantalized with views of the St. Louis arch in the distance, but we knew we would get there eventually so we just relaxed and enjoyed the riverfront area. The prettiest features of the riverfront, in my view, are the graceful bridges across the Mississippi to Illinois.

Other folks may like the charming riverboats docked at the shore, but I really cannot appreciate them. I think I would like them if they were “real” riverboats used for transportation, but they are actually just floating casinos and I can’t help thinking that their sole purpose is to pull money from the pockets of honest working folk. In any case the one docked in St. Louis was the traditional white and a fairly graceful looking thing, but the one docked upstream at Alton was garishly painted in green, red, and orange fluorescent paints and I think any sane person would agree that one was really hideous.

We gradually approached the arch and turned back into the city by walking right underneath it—it really is an astonishing structure. First of all, it’s really, really tall—almost spindly looking from our vantagepoint. Second, the whole thing is covered with a spotless stainless steel surface and the sun gleamed brightly off some section of it no matter which way we looked at it. From some angles the sun was reflected so brightly that it looked like a silver rainbow brought down to earth.

On the other side of the arch is a park with something that looked to me like an old capitol building, but Monika informed me it was an old cathedral. We detoured south a bit to pass by the city hall, which was a very large, old, ornate building, and then thru the old Union Station to get back to the start/finish point. The old Union Station has been preserved and converted to a hotel and mini-mall with restaurants, boutiques, and a food court. If you get hungry during this walk, try to hold out to the Union Station—you have several nice restaurants or a varied set of fast-food selections in the food court so you should find something there to fit the bill.

The second checkpoint was the stained glass panel in the hotel’s lobby. The lobby is the old main waiting room of the train station and even without the beautiful stained glass panel it would be simply gorgeous. The vaulted ceiling and stained glass windows all along one side really reminded me of a cathedral. They also had working scale models of some of the old steam engines displayed in glass cases—I would have very much liked to see one of those puppies in operation! If you visit Union Station, don’t forget to try out the whispering gallery near the front door. It was found by accident that even whispers at one side of the entrance arch are carried faithfully across to the other side about 40 feet away—Monika and I tried it and it really worked perfectly.

So we re-crossed the bridge to the finish point and rather regretfully started our drive back to Illinois. But the bright sunshine allowed us to take some nice pictures on our way back, and we returned in time to see the Visitors Center at Pere Marquette park—it’s only open from 9 am to 3:30 pm. There are some nice exhibits inside and a short film that describes the history of the park, so we had fun with all that before returning to our campsite for the evening. It was cool but comfortable outside, so Monika crocheted and played some dulcimer while I processed pictures and brought the journal up to date.

When the sun was going down, we went down to the water to take some sunset pictures. We were lucky that several families of Canadian geese let themselves be chased right into the sunset. We also watched a great blue heron catching a rather large fish. When the swallowing did not work so well on the first try. He put the fish back in the water to soak it a little, I guess. When he tried a second time, a second heron came flying by, and the first one did not wait to swallow but left quickly with his price.