Crossing Missouri and arrival in St. Louis
September 4th
On Sunday morning after another noisy night in the campground, we left the state park and drove across Missouri. We stopped in the small state capital, Jefferson City, and visited the Capitol which housed a small history museum. It’s amazing to be reminded that 200 years ago, Missouri was the far west and the American frontier. Today it takes another 3 days of straight driving to reach the western frontier. When the Civil War broke out, Missouri was a slave state but the divisions were so great that families ended up fighting against each other. We took a walk around the capitol grounds which were deserted on Sunday except for a few families. There wasn’t much else to see so we continued the road towards St. Louis.
As we approached St. Louis we had the feeling we were approaching a ghost town- abandoned buildings, old industrial sites. When we arrived in downtown, there were more signs of life- people out with their families enjoying the nice weather around the Jefferson Arch and the sounds of music festival echoing through the air. We had time to do a quick guided visit of the old courthouse. We learned about the history of St. Louis, the Golden Era and the suburbanization, 50% of the population has moved out of downtown and to the suburbs in the last 50 years. After the courthouse, we went to visit the visitor’s center at the Jefferson Arch. We decided to skip the tramway that takes you to the top- it was expensive and there was a long wait, but we did visit the Western Expansion museum. Just to get in to the museum, we had to wait 15 minutes in a line to pass security. The museum was packed with people and badly organized. We had visited so many sights on this subject (we had been living it the last six months) that we already knew most of the history so we didn’t stay too long. We walked around the arch and back to the car. After crossing the Mississippi River (a symbolic moment as we returned to the “east”), we stopped at a campground (actually in Illinois.) We would return to St. Louis the next morning to continue our visit.
Tags: BIG TRIP 2011, In English 2005-2006, Missouri
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