St Louis Arch and Cardinals Baseball

Another hot day in St Louis, but a very good time today. We start out by driving down to the Mississippi River and parking on the side of the river close to the St Louis Arch. It's a short, but interesting, walk to the arch. The Mississippi had flooded a few weeks ago and we can still see evidence of high water in this area.

We buy our tickets to ride up to the top of the arch; actually we buy a combo ticket that includes a paddleboat ride on the Mississippi. Then we spend some time checking out the museum at the base of the arch. I'm not crazy about small, enclosed spaces so the ride up to the top of the arch in a little room with 5 of us sitting in a few feet high room is not 'fun' for me, but it is unique. The view from the top of the arch is great and we spend about 30 minutes looking at everything far below us.

Our next stop is our 90 minute paddleboat ride on the Mississippi River.

We get some great views of the Arch from the boat.

We can see debris from the flooding that occurred several weeks earlier.

We also watch barges get loaded with coal.

After the boatride we grab some lunch on the dock at the Arch Cafe. Food's okay, and we eat outside where there's a little breeze from the river.

We return to the bottom of the Arch to see the rest of the museum and their movie. Nice museum, interesting movie, GREAT air-conditioning. I see an interesting quote from FDR on the one wall. Timeless quote --

Today we are faced with the preeminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships – the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together and work together in the same world, at peace.

After the movie we head over to the old city hall -- nice architecture, but we don't spend a lot of time there. I can only take reading so many museum displays in one day :-)

We head back to the RV park for a relaxing swim, some dinner and then head back downtown to see the Cardinals.

The Cardinals won so we kept our streak of the home team winning. They had 4 solo home runs and beat the Padres 4-3, which made the sold out crowd very happy.

Busy day, but a good day!