I-55 at a glance

My husband decided to surprise me with a trip to the Arch in St. Louis. I have wanted to see it for some time. It fascinated me how something that large and in such an odd shape could even exist. I have been in and around the St. Louis area at least five times and never been close to the Arch. The only time I had seen it was from Monk's Mound in Cahokia during a trip during my field school for Anthropology while in college, it seemed necessary to actually see it up close and in person.


The voyage to St. Louis from Michigan was just as interesting as the arch. We had to take 1-55 all the way down to St. Louis. It was one long highway that stretched the length of the state of Illinois.   On the way down it was dark so I didn't see all the things we saw on the way up. It's not America's most interesting highway by any means, there is a lot of corn fields, construction, and places where there is nothing. However, there are giant windmill farms, a peppering of antique markets, tons of museums about Lincoln, and many little oddities along the way.

One stop we made was through a place named Odell. We stopped to see how loud the wind farms are and see if they were really as awful as a documentary we had just watched.  We didn't get close enough to the giant windmills to hear them, or see the shadows they make on the ground, but they did seem really invasive. There were hundreds of them, they were on both sides of the highway as we drove, as we got closer, they got bigger and even as we were still a mile away they seemed so large. We didn't get close enough because they are some distance from the road, but we could see where houses had been near them were either abandoned, or bought out. There was one windmill all by itself right next to the highway and it was huge, I can't imagine how those are assembled.

We also stopped at an antique mall called "The Pink Elephant". They also sell ice cream, have a giant bicycle, and a UFO. The store itself is very large, there are three stories of antiques.  We perused through the aisle for about an hour, there seemed to be no end. After stopping there we noticed many more of them on our way back to Michigan, but none of them were so elaborate.




The Arch was beautiful. It was centered in the middle of a park on the bank of the river. It was a national security check point so we had to go through a metal detector and my purse had to go through the x-ray. It was amazing inside. It was deceiving how the edge of the arch hid the entrance, then how large it was under the ground. We did not go up to the top of the arch. This was because we had to get back to Chicago that evening to meet family and the wait time was far too long. We didn't realize there was a number to call to make a reservation so there would be no wait in line.  Randy promised me we could come back some time so I could go up to the top.

Attractions inside the arch were the Westward Expansion museum, the Lewis and Clark adventure and the 3D movie about the arch. It was a pretty cool place inside. The fact that the museums, theaters, and gift shops were all tucked nicely underneath the arch was really surprising. There was even a taxidermic bear in the center of the lobby.

All in all it was a fun adventure with lots to see.