Who wants to take a road trip with me??? Great, let's do it!!! We're going to an iconic landmark, a state capital, and we'll get a couple of FLW hits in for good measure.
How This Trip Came to Be
Last month I took Amtrak from Chicago to Austin, and the train stopped in St. Louis. This view of the Arch from the train was all that it took to make me want to go there ASAP.
From my list of travel ideas, I knew that I wanted to make at least three stops in Missouri: the Arch, the capitol, and the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum. As a bonus, the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum is a few hours away from a FLW house in Bentonville, Arkansas, so if I was coming all that way it made sense to go a little further an add that to the list. But wait, there was more! When I was looking for other sites to see in STL, it turned out that there is an FLW house there as well. Nice! I took a look at all of the pieces, arranged them in order, and I had my travel plan. I broke down the drive so that I was not driving any more than six hours in a day, which I consider to be a common sense sanity/safety thing as a solo driver.
- Tuesday, June 23: leave after lunch and drive to Terre Haute, Indiana. There was nothing that I wanted to do there (sorry Terre Haute!), but it fit my six hour driving cap.
- Wednesday, June 24: drive to STL, which is a few hours away.
- Stop at the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, which I only knew about because Google was kind enough to pop it up on the map.
- Tour the FLW STL house
- Tour the Anheuser-Busch brewery
- Thursday, June 25: Arch Day!!! I got the all in package which was a ride to the top of the Arch, a couple of movies, the museum, and a river cruise.
- Friday, June 26: leave STL and go to Jefferson City to tour the capitol and the Missouri State Penitentiary.
- Saturday, June 27: leave Jefferson City, drive to the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum in Mansfield, and then continue on to Bentonville, Arkansas.
- Sunday, June 28: tour the Bentonville FLW house, get into any other interesting Bentonville things (very likely the Walmart museum). Begin the drive back home, spending the night in Rolla, Missouri (similar to Terre Haute, I picked it because it fit the drive and not because I wanted to go there specifically).
- Monday, June 29: continue driving home, spend the night in Indianapolis.
- Tuesday, June 30: home!
That's the plan, let's get on the road!
Getting There - An Uneventful Report
Instead of just dropping Doggo off with Hubs, I timed my departure for the noon hour so that we could have lunch and a dog walk together. Afterwards I hit the road, and made my first pit stop at the Columbus Ikea and got in some leg stretching/window shopping. I got back on the road and my next stop was for gas, which was naturally at Buc-ee's. Ohio folks know how to party!
I arrived at Terre Haute at 8:00 which is a bit later than I like to be on the road, but once I saw the hotel I was very happy that I hadn't gotten there any earlier. The place was an IHG property, and it was a dump. The room had a very pervasive musty smell. I did not sleep well, and was back on the road nice and early.
Almost There - Let's See Some Mounds
Ancient earthworks are one of my travel side quests, and the Cahokia Mounds were on the way. I read that they are the largest mounds in North America, and once I got there, I could see that this was not an exaggeration.
The earthworks are very inspiring to see, but for purposes of transparency so that you can decide if you want to continue reading this blog or not, I have an immature streak that will not die, and I want you to know that when I see this:
That there is a part of me that thinks this:
Anyhoo, there are a lot of humps, er I mean, mounds at the Cahokia site but the mothership is Monk's Mound. I started up the stairs.
And then got to the terrace where there are more stairs...
And then had the big payoff at the top.
Eventually everything that goes up must come down.
First Stop in STL: Let's Catch Up with FLW
My first order of business in STL was a tour of the Frank Lloyd Wright House in Ebsworth Park.
The answer was in the bedroom.
Most FLW houses have a theme or a motif. Our guide had a few visual aids that she showed us before we went into the house, and one of them was of a parallelogram. She put great emphasis on it.
Once we were inside, she pointed to the floor grid. Normally these houses have square tiles, but this house has parallelograms and everything lines up very precisely with the floor grid. Okay, I guess that's interesting, but where was she going with this?
The guest bedroom was another oddity. Before you started reading this post you most likely did not know the name of the capital city of Missouri, and you probably had never seen a six sided bed before.
The owners never hooked up the shower in the guest bathroom, so the thinking is that they did not have a lot of overnight guests.
The other darling thing about the house is that the owners did not have children, but they did have a cat. There is a wooden ledge that runs close to the ceiling throughout the house, and the cat was known to hang out there.
After the tour, I had a bit of time before my next event, and it was too early to check into the Airbnb. It was also very hot, and I was feeling it. What was a public place with air conditioning where I could hang out and chill for a while? Oh yes, that would be a library. I navigated to the nearest one, which was very nice, but once I got there I realized that I was not just overheated, I was extremely thirsty in a way that was going to go south if I didn't do something about it. I looked for a coffee shop and found Harmony Tea Shoppe a few blocks away.
I got a pineapple mocktail and spent the next hour sipping it while I recovered from the heat. It was exactly what the doctor ordered.
Next Stop in STL: It's Five O'Clock Somewhere
My last planned activity of the day was a tour of the Anheuser-Busch brewery. As you may know, I am an incredible and unapologetic beer snob, and my brew of choice is Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Ale or a nice hazy IPA. The reason why I was interested in the Bud tour is that two years ago when I went to Milwaukee I toured the Miller brewery, which I enjoyed very much.
If you asked me which tour was better, I'd say Miller. They gave out a variety of samples so you left the tour knowing the full range of Miller products, there was more info on the beer brewing process, and I picked up on a vibe of a more genuine enthusiasm. Anheuser-Busch only gave out two samples BUT they have Clydesdales.
The backstory is that prohibition was (obviously) very hard on the brewing industry. I forget how Miller made it through, but Anheuser-Bush basically diversified into every business that they could diversify into to survive. When they got word that prohibition was going to be repealed, they wanted to do a splashy publicity stunt to let everyone know that they were back. They got hold of some old red wagons and some Clydesdales to deliver the first round of post-prohibition beer.
Let's Rate the Airbnb!
The unit was a 600 sq foot, one bedroom house in the Southwest Garden neighborhood. Tiny by residential standards, just right for a solo Airbnb.
Pros:
- Well laid out, great use of space (with two exceptions)
- Very comfy
- Everything was brand new and squeaky clean. It looked like I was the first person who ever walked in the door.
- Very easy on the wallet!
Cons:
- Only one kitchen towel, and no dish drying rack or drying mat.
- The kitchen was huge, and the trash can was located a million miles away from anywhere that a person would use it.
- A silly shower situation. A lot of the reviews called out that the shower was very small, and as much as I try to avoid the dreaded "tiny shower" situation, everything else worked about the unit, so sometimes you compromise. What I found is that while the shower was on the small size, it wasn't that bad. The problem was the shower shelves. They were just too big in proportion to the available space, so that is what was causing the squeeze.
Anyway, the STL Airbnb was a very welcome change from the smelly hotel of the night before, and I soon got caught up on my sleep.
Let's Go to the Arch!
I sure did not expect the tiny tram cars. It's a small space that seats five people. There were few enough people that there were only four of us in my car, and we sure got to know each other well on the ride up and back.
One of the architect's claims to fame was this style of chair, which was the inspo for the chairs in the tram.
It takes a few minutes to get to the top, during which time you can't see anything outside of the car. Then you get to the top, and the situation is this:
It's a small space with small windows and lots of people.
But folks were good about not hogging the windows, so everyone got the views.
After 10 minutes you get called back to your tram for the ride back down.
To sum up the experience of riding to the top of the Arch: while I don't have a formal list of places that I want to go on my 50 state tour, there are some places that are just so iconic that they are must do's. The Arch is one of those places. For that reason I'm glad that I did it, I liked the experience, but I also think that maybe it's one of those things that gets ranked a little lower on the list.
Afterwards I browsed the museum and had lunch in the cafe. I had the toasted ravioli, which is an STL specialty, and I wouldn't mind if the trend went nation wide. Just a note on the food in general: this was my only "meal out" of the STL part of the trip. I had very full days and I was tired, so I stuck to grocery store fare.
There was a 10 minute VR movie of old St. Louis, and a longer documentary about the construction of the Arch. The story behind it is that St. Louis is located on the intersection of two major waterways so back in the day if you were going anywhere in the west, you were going through STL. It became known as the gateway to the west, and in the 30s there was a call to have a special monument marking it as such. Many designs were submitted, and the Arch was the winner. It was not an easy build, and the prediction was that there would be a few fatalities in the construction. The actual number of fatalities was zero. So the project was a resounding success: achievement unlocked with a memorable monument, and no one died.
After the movies I had some time to walk around the grounds, and then it was time for the riverboat cruise.
And then it was time for...a break! It was another long, hot day and I headed back to my pad to chill for the night before moving on to Jefferson City. But that's a story for another day.
Who has been to STL? Who's been to the top of the Arch?
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