Loving St Louis

Clarksville were quick to get their
sandbags out when the floods came

The Mighty Mississippi

Leaving Hannibal we headed south.  We took the scenic route following the Mississippi down to St Louis.  The photos really don’t do it justice but a real pretty road to take.  Could see the result of some flooding they had in various low-lying areas along the way.  The town of Clarksville still had all their sandbags out.

The view from the ferris wheel
10 storeys up was amazing

Then it was into St Louis.  We found ourselves an RV park just south of the city to park up for a few days.  First trip into St Louis was to visit the City Museum.  What an amazing place. 

You can sit in the drivers
seat of the bus and open
the door to the 10
storeys straight down

It’s based in an old 10-storey shoe warehouse and factory.  At present they have 3 floors filled along with the rooftop and an outside playground and they are continually building new attractions.  We spent an entire day just with what they have – imagine what the place would be like if all 10 floors were
filled with the weird and the wonderful.  Another great feature of this place – there are no maps.  You just wander round exploring. 
A lot of the tunnels, sadly for us, are kid-sized so we had to find the boring adult-sized paths around.  In saying that though, we did squeeze through a lot of places we wouldn’t normally consider.  And of course, we took the stairs to the rooftop.
  

Clearly we didn't expend enough energy on walking up the stairs,
we got this hamster wheel humming.

Good fun – that’s the museum not the stairs – 10 storeys was quite hard work.  Just remember if you visit this place, unlike us in our girly sandals, wear your running shoes.  Did I mention we spent all day there.

This dragon was recued from a pagoda that had been built for
the World's Fair in 1904

Jean showing the little kids how it's done

MonstroCity - a 4-storey outside adventure playground

Some of these old chutes from the shoe warehouse days have
been converted into stairs, others into slides

The next day saw us travelling around St Louis to see what the city could come up with to match the City Museum. 

Sue finds one of Steve Connolly's spare eyes - how it
ended up in St Louis we'll never know

Happy to report St Louis came up trumps.  We started at the Laumeier Sculpture Park that had some weird and wonderful sculptures, some a bit esoteric that got us scratching our heads and thinking either 1) stop taking the drugs or 2) please take some drugs; and some that we had a bit of fun with.

Jean making like a big booger

 

From there it was on to Delmar Boulevard and the St Louis Walk of Fame.  We walked a few blocks but only managed to find a small handful of famous St Louis people that we recognised – Charles Lindbergh, Robert Guillaume, Agnes Moorhead, Chuck Berry and Tennessee Williams among them. 

Johnny B Good on air
guitar never sounded
so good

Speaking of Chuck, when Jean was posing for this photo the busker just there changed immediately from his Beatles medley to a Chuck Berry number.  Cracked us both up.

Ventured back onto Route 66 with a walk across the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge over the Mississippi River. 

Such an interesting name, such a long walk, such a scary experience for a lot of people travelling by car across this long, narrow bridge with a 30 degree bend on it.  It was named for, you guessed it, a chain of rocks that made navigation on that part of the river hazardous … but that’s someone else’s story.  Along the bridge are a few nods to the old Route 66 – photos duly taken.

Taking a break part way along the bridge

Don't worry - we haven't traded our pick up
(red does go faster though)



After lunch we found ourselves within a couple of blocks of the Anheuser-Busch Brewery otherwise known as the Budweiser Brewery. 

So naturally we graced them with our presence.  The attention to detail on both the external and internal architecture is simply amazing.  They offer complementary tours along with $10 tours.  We chose the $10 tour where you get 3 samples along the way as well as a bottle straight off the bottling line to take home.  There were 4 guys from Toowoomba who were leaving the country in a couple of days and had no way of cooling their freebies so initially declined them.  When we got over the shock of Aussies turning down a free beer we conned them into donating them to our worthy cause.  Good on ya Aussies :) (that’s a euphemism for they did).  We got to see a couple of the Clydesdales too.  How good is that!

Exterior shot of the brewhouse

Inside the brewhouse

Relaxing in the Biergarten

Eventually left the biergarten and headed back into the city to check out the Gateway Arch. 

630' high at the top
of the Arch

There are pods you can sit in to go up to the viewing platform right at the top of the arch so, of course, we elected to go to the top.  Before you enter the pod, they check everyone for claustrophobic tendencies.  We can see why. 

There was even room for Sue
to squeeze in here

There are 5 of you in the pod and there isn’t a lot of room.  The view from the top is pretty good too but, for me, the ride was the most fun.

Shadow of the Arch across the Mississippi
and a rather large barge

Got a recommendation for dinner so wandered down to Big Daddy’s at Laclede’s Landing to try a St Louis speciality – toasted ravioli.  They were delicious so if you have the opportunity to try them I’d recommend them.  Forgot to take a photo of the food so you’ll have to settle for these two:

Can't have toasted ravioli without a brewski - or two

Off the mainstream tourist track for our next few attractions.  A huge

The garden is in the shape
of a butterfly wing

butterfly and caterpillar, a giant waking up & bursting out of the ground, a front garden that has been transformed into a model railway,

A very hungry caterpillar -
Sue about to be devoured

another Mills mall and, saving the best until last, a walk on the site of an old uranium processing plant.  During WWII the US government appropriated quite a lot of land (three towns were demolished for this project) just outside St Louis to make a TNT and DNT processing plant. 

The Awakening - 70' long, 17' high

During the cold war a uranium processing plant was set up.  When this shut down everything was just left where it was and walked away from.  The EPA subsequently came in to organise a massive clean up.  

Dan's Emerald Forest 

Took about 19 years and they’ve done a fantastic job with all the contaminated material contained in, what they call, a disposal cell.  The land around the cell has been donated to various conservation and government groups and, while it is still being monitored regularly, is back to how nature originally intended. 

St Louis Mills - not
really a distant cousin

Can you tell I was fascinated by the history of the place.  We went for a walk up the top of the cell to be confronted by a storm coming in.  It mostly circled around us although there was some rain when we got back to the Interpretive Centre.

One of the many lightning strikes while we were up on the disposal cell
(centre, slightly to the right)

Aerial shot (not taken by me - could ya tell) of the disposal cell - the path
to the top is on the left hand side



A whole $1 per hour

Yep, safety was a huge concern even when the world
was black and white

Meet Me In St Louis

Amazing to think this
was made by a 90 year old
- it's huge

Still in the Des Moines area we did a day trip to Pella.  On the way we found this sculpture made with wagon wheels in the middle of nowhere.  Of course we had to stop and discovered it was built by a man in his 90’s.  Gotta be impressed with that.  We followed this up with a bit of hide and seek in the corn.

Who can spot the Mills sisters hiding in the corn?

Vermeer Windmill, Pella

Finally got to Pella.  Pella is famous (world famous in Iowa) for having the tallest working windmill in the USA.  The town itself was founded by a group of people from Holland seeking religious freedom back in the mid-

How many of you with Dutch
heritage remember carpet
on the tables?

1800’s.  The townsfolk are very proud of their Dutch heritage which is reflected throughout the town.  We ended up spending several hours wandering around both the town, the mill and the historic village finishing up at a steakhouse for tea.  We even brought some buns baked with the flour ground at the mill.



Someone left these clogs outside - Jean's
trying them on for size

"Check out my new shoes" Sue appears to be saying

Leaving Des Moines we first went south then headed east to visit the 

Who remembers this face
from Sunday evening
television in NZ?

small town of Marceline in Missouri.  Marceline is where Walt Disney grew up and he had a real affinity for the place – kinda like the two of us and Westshore.  Main Street USA in Disneyland was even modelled on Main Street, Marceline.  We called in at the old railway station that has been restored and turned into a museum honouring the Disney family.  Completely lost track of time and almost got locked in for our troubles, eventually leaving almost half an hour after closing time.  I’m sure we would have coped.

M - I - C (see you real soon)

K - E - Y (Why? Because we like you)

M - O - U - S - E

  Spent the next two nights in Walmart car parks – love their hospitality and we do get our groceries from them from time to time.  

All this touristing
is thirsty work

Not so keen on being joined alongside by trucks who leave their rigs idling all night long so they can have air con but, hey, it’s free so who’s complaining.  In between these Walmart stops we were in Hannibal, the home town of Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain. 

Even Jean got suckered into
painting

Spent the day wandering around the town taking in a lot of the Tom Sawyer sights including re-enacting the famous painting the fence scene.  Almost went for a dinner cruise on the riverboat but it wasn’t a genuine paddle steamer so we just took photos instead.



We'll find a genuine paddle steamer one day

Big Men and Bridges

Hermann the German

Before leaving New Ulm we stocked up on our new favourite brew – Schell’s Firebrick.  Took in a couple more of the tourist sites in New Ulm, the largest being a 102’ statue of Hermann the German (his ambush of the Romans way back when being credited with the halt of the Roman expansion into Europe) then headed south to Blue Earth then east to Harmony. 

Drove through Winnebago on our way to Blue Earth – felt just a tad nervous driving through a town called Winnebago in a Rockwood RV. 
No lightning bolts came down to smite us so we continued on to Blue Earth, stopping for lunch by the Jolly Green Giant.  Apart from a cold wind blowing it was a lovely spot.  The Jolly Green Giant is a 55’ tall mascot for the Green Giant canned and frozen vegetable company.  Something about big men in our travels today … 

Jolly Green Giant from our
lunch table

Didn’t quite make it to Harmony.  We pulled into an RV park in Lanesboro with the intention of unhitching the RV and driving up the road to a museum.  As we were setting up one of our new neighbours came over and introduced herself to us (Hi Karen!) so, instead of going to yet another museum, we chatted with some new friends over a beer.  A much better option I thought.

Sue assisting Jean with her Ice Challenge
- apparently Sue was tipping the icy
water too slowly for Jean's liking

Next day had us call in at the museum in Harmony.  Sadly it was closed for the day as the owner’s wife was ill and he was looking after her.  That gave us more time to get to our overnight destination of Walmart in Waterloo and for Jean to prepare for her Ice Challenge.  For those not familiar with the challenge, people get nominated via social media (Facebook) by someone who has done/is about to do their own challenge.  These people then have 24-48 hours to douse themselves in ice water or pay $100 to charity.

It didn't go straight onto the ground - honest!

From what I understand it was originally set up by a woman whose child has cancer and was to raise funds/awareness specifically for child cancer but these things have a way of evolving.  I’ve seen some that are 24 hours, others 48.  Some to donate to child cancer, others to a charity of choice. 

Drank some Tennessee Fire to
balance out the ice

Some where you douse yourself with ice and pay $20 to charity, only paying $100 if you renege on the ice part.  Either way, Jean was nominated and chose the ice water.  She did well.

From Waterloo we headed to Waukee, west of Des Moines where we’re parking up for a few days to explore the surrounding area.  Murphy (from Murphy’s Law) found us – we left

The train is but a blur in the middle
of this Washington DC scene

Waterloo quite early but the two Roadside America attractions we were planning on visiting weren’t open until after lunch.  We weren’t planning to stick around that long so drove down to Colfax where we visited Trainland USA.  For those familiar with Lilliput in Napier, Trainland is along the same lines.  For those not familiar with Lilliput in Napier, Google is a wonderful tool.  Just kidding,

The night time scenes looked
pretty good too

Trainland is a model train set with lots of Lionel trains going around tracks that are built around models of some of the cities and states of America.  It’s very well done and worth the effort to see (Railway kids can never completely leave trains alone).

Went out again late that afternoon to visit a couple of bridges.  The first, the Highest

The old and the new double track rail
bridges.  I'm guessing the new
concrete bridge now shares the
claim of being the tallest.

Double-Track Rail Bridge in USA could’ve been seen any time but the second, which is in the same area, the High Trestle Trail Bridge, is best viewed at night.  The bridge itself spans the Des Moines River, is 13 storeys at its highest point but best of all, has blue neon lights that make funky patterns.  Quite a hike to get to it but well worth the trek and the thousands upon thousands of night time insects.

Jean on the High Trestle Trail Bridge

Sue on the High Trestle Trail Bridge

The bridge is 13 storeys high at its highest point as it crosses the Des Moines River

 

Our next visit in the Des Moines area was to a town named Stuart.  



Stuart Water Tower
and Hotel Stuart -
the Strictly Modern under
the hotel name relates
to when indoor plumbing
was installed in the 1920's

Stuart’s claim to fame (apart from being our brother’s name – BTW Happy Birthday for the other day bro – and our mother’s maiden name) is that Bonnie & Clyde robbed the local bank back in 1934.

Would you really want this
as your claim to fame?

After visiting Stuart (and taking a dozen photos of things with the name Stuart on them) we drove past the Freedom Rock in Menlo.  Every year the rock gets a new patriotic painting.  The guy doing the painting is planning to paint a Freedom Rock in every one of Iowa’s 99 counties.  Not a small undertaking.

Every surface on the Freedom Rock is painted

We then spent the rest of the day at Winterset.  After lunching in the City Park we had a bit of fun in an English Victorian-style maze …

Hmm, do I go this way or that way?

Catch me if you can

… then a gorgeous drive through the park to Clark Tower – a 3-storey limestone crenelated tower with some great views of … trees.

Clark Tower in City Park

Saving the best until last, we then drove around Madison County, locating all the Covered Bridges of Madison County.  There are 6 in all.  Just have to watch the movie now.

Hogback Covered Bridge

 

Imes Covered Bridge

 

Driving through the Cedar Covered Bridge - this one is a replica which
is why it can be driven through.  The original was destroyed by arson. 

 

Sue & Jean on the Cedar Covered Bridge