By: Samie

Travel Dates: July 2015

St. Louis, MO

(St. Louis Arch/The Gateway Arch)

Despite already having a week of some very adventurous and fun-filled days, we still had a few experiences in our path before arriving back home from our North Carolina road trip.

After departing from Nashville the previous evening, the big city on our agenda for Day 8 was St. Louis, Missouri! I don’t remember where we stayed the night, but from Nashville, it is only about a 4 and a half hour drive to St. Louis, so the morning drive couldn’t have been too far off of that time frame.

Driving into the city, The Gateway Arch was immediately recognizable and marked that we had made it to the right place! We found some public parking within walking distance of the Arch and began to make our way over to it. As we got closer, the Arch continued to loom, growing larger and larger until we were finally at its base, and I was able to take in its full height. It was much taller than I had pictured in my head!

We weren’t just there to see the Arch from the outside, however. We were going to be getting an up-close and personal (and high) view by taking a ride to the top of the Arch!

After going through the lobby and securing our tickets, the first step to making your way up to the peak of the Arch is to meet at the door of a numbered pod. We would be hopping into pod number four! There are five seats within each pod, and you take it up into the entrance of the rounded top of the Arch.

In my recollection, it goes up and around like an enclosed Ferris wheel, but it could definitely have gone up more like an elevator. My memory is unfortunately unreliable after 10 years.

Once at the top, you step out, and it feels like you are stepping out on the clouds themselves. You get a perfect view of the surrounding city when you look off to one side, especially Busch Stadium, home to the St. Louis Cardinals MLB team.

Looking out to the other side, you get a view of the massive Mississippi River and the Illinois part of St. Louis. You also can get a pretty clear view of the large river’s murky waters by looking straight down. When looking down from either side, you realize how high up in the air you actually are!

At the very center of the top of the Gateway Arch, you are 630 feet up in the air. For reference, this is about the size of about a 63-story skyscraper. As the tallest monument in the United States, it is about 75 feet taller than the Washington Monument and over twice the size of the Statue of Liberty!

After returning back down to Earth, we had some time to wander the area before having to hit the road again. It was another scorcher of a summer day, so when a small little street ice cream cart presented the opportunity to cool off with a sweet treat, I couldn’t pass it up!

As I scarfed down my tasty tummy air conditioning unit, we made our way over so that we were standing across the street and in front of the Gateway Arch to get a different vantage point and collect some more fun pictures. We then made our way back to a small square we had walked through on our way to the Arch. It hosted the Old Courthouse building as well as some relaxing water features that allowed the breeze to mist us with some cool water droplets.

Before we knew it, time had flown by, and we had just enough time to find a spot to grab lunch before it would be time to depart. We found a very quaint little deli, where I ordered a Reuben. It was absolutely amazing!

After lunch, it was time to make our way to our hotel for the evening, with only one last stretch of travel between us and home.

Heading Home

(Fisher Cave, Missouri to Watertown)

Our very final excursion for this grand road trip adventure took us to Fisher Cave, located in Meramec State Park in Missouri. The cave is not open to the public for self-guided tours, so if you want to check it out, you will need to purchase a ticket for a guided tour. Fortunately, tickets are very affordable at $14 for adults, $12 for teens aged 13-17, $10 for children aged 6-12, and free for any children under 6! The tour is about 90 minutes and takes you through all the beauty and thriving deposits and wildlife thriving in this natural wonder.

To start, we got the cutest little bat stamps after purchasing our tickets and adults were even given lanterns to carry and light our paths to avoid slipping on the damp stone floors. The beginning of the tour brought us through a more narrow hallway part of the cave over a clear babbling stream. I even managed to spot and capture a sneaky little salamander pattering about in the darkness of the cave (well until we came through with our lamps that is).

As we continued, we looked out on what looked like a glacier made of solid and unmoving rock expanding and rising until it filled the expanse of the cave way out beyond our reach. We continued our walk until we came across the beginnings of stalagmite and stalactite buildups and deposits, many appearing only as little stony icicles or stumps. However, as we trekked deeper and deeper, the cave formations grew and matured, mutating from little drips and drops into frozen fossilized waterfalls and cascades.

We ventured through more narrow corridors before entering into an enormous ballroom of stone columns, curtains, and drapery. I’ve always found the large chambers of caves to be very calming and peaceful (especially when I am being safely guided and know I will not be fighting over territory with some big and scary wild animal). Fisher Cave definitely brought the serenity I long for when doing my own kind of tourist spelunking.

With the completion of our cave tour, it was sadly time to leave the journey behind and follow the road ahead because, as a lovely young lady named Dorothy would say, there’s no place like home.

We made our way through Washington, Missouri to Kansas City, Missouri, where we stopped for lunch at Firehouse Subs. Since the drive from Fisher Cave to Watertown is about 10 and a half hours, I wouldn’t surprised if we stopped one more place for the night before actually arriving at home. However, my photo album ends with us driving through the large and bustling Kansas City, so that is where I will choose to end my written saga as well.

I am very grateful for the opportunities I was granted to travel with my family throughout my college years. While entering into my first official chapter of adulthood was thrilling and allowed me to become the woman I am now, every extra memory and moment spent with my family, the first people to love me and cherish me for the person I was on my good days and bad and allot me grace as I learned who I was, will be time I will always be thankful for. It is time I can never get back or change, so every second, minute, moment is a drop in the bucket of who I am and who I will become, and I am better off for it.