Today was the first day that the road started to drag on us a bit. We've been having a lot of fun, and I'm certainly glad we started this journey, but spending all this time in the car is starting to take it's toll. I think we were both a little grumpy this morning, and throughout the day I've just felt a bit more tired and uncomfortable. That being said, today was extremely fun, mostly thanks to the oddness that is St. Louis.
We woke up a little late, and got on the road about 11. We decided to skip breakfast again, because Lisa had spotted a classic Rt. 66 stop just an hour or so away that promised delicious hot dogs at the Cozy Drive In. It wasn't actually a drive in, and the hot dogs were actually corn dogs, but it was every bit as classic as we hoped. We had picked up Rt. 66 last night, and continued on it today. It's a lot more fun driving on the smaller roads, as they stop in each small town and you can take a quick look around to see if there's anything worth checking out. We ate two corn dogs each and a basket of fries, and I had my usual morning (at noon) coffee, before hopping back on the road to St. Louis.
On the way, we stopped at two more roadside attractions, both in Collinsville, Il. The first was the world's largest bottle of Catsup (which made me wonder if there was possibly a larger bottle of Ketchup somewhere, brought to you by Heinz). It's 170' tall, and pretty impressive. I'm not sure what else can be said about a giant bottle of catsup.
The second was, in my opinion, far more fascinating. In Collinsville there was an old Indian settlement called Cahokia. At this settlement is a huge field filled with these giant mounds of earth. Apparently they're totally man made, and as yet, no one knows how. They suspect they were built to hold up important structures in town, and also to cover the bodies of important members of society. When I say big, the largest one looked more like an Aztec temple than a small hill. We climbed up the biggest one, which was said to house the home of the leader of the tribe. From the top we got a great view of St. Louis, including the arch.
Man made wonders like this never cease to amaze me. Like the Pyramids or the giant Aztec temples in South America, the mounds defy belief. How could a tribe of Indians from thousands of years ago create such beautiful, impressive structures using only their hands and maybe some basic tools. Nowadays a project like this would cost a city millions of dollars and require cranes, huge trucks, and who knows what else. I'm always humbled by things like this, and the Cahokia Mounds were no different. I'm glad Lisa is playing tour guide because I never would have found the mounds on my own.
After our roadside fun we finally rolled into St. Louis around 2. We drove around for a while, trying to get a good picture of the Arch, checking out America's Center (which was actually just some kind of convention center) and St. Louis Center (which was actually a mall). Finally we drove to some random corner of town and found the City Museum, by far the oddest thing we've seen so far and possibly the oddest thing we'll see all trip.
The Museum is difficult to describe, and I'm not sure what, if anything, you're supposed to learn from it. It's basically this giant indoor playplace that's big enough for adults, and it seems to be made of old factory parts and machines. There are stairs up and down inside the building, and an odd network of caves, metal tubes, and metal frameworks. We wondered several times if children were allowed in unattended, because we saw at least half a dozen seperate spots where a child could fall, get stuck, or possibly impaled. We climbed all the way up about 8 flights of spiral stairs, before sliding back down a big metal slide. I have to admit I was a bit scared of the slide, mainly because I thought it was going to be a lot faster than it actually was. It did get quite dark, which wasn't exactly fun, but overall it was a great experience.
Attached to the outside of the building is another network of tubes and stairs and metal, this one holding up two half-destroyed airplanes. Lisa is small enough that she was able to fit through most of the metal tubes and lattice climbing areas, and I followed her around using more spiral stairs. I'm sure I'm doing a terrible job of describing this, maybe if you google it you can make more sense of it. Just imagine the biggest McDonald's Playplace you've ever seen, multiply it in size by 5, and make the whole thing out of sharp, cold metal. There you go. Also, there's weird music playing and a giant hamster wheel.
We spun out of the city around 5:30, only to discover there's basically no rush hour in St. Louis. Also, we found studio apartments starting at 525. Hmm...maybe we'll have to come back here some day! St. Louis was awesome.
We left St. Louis and tried to make tracks across Missouri, and into Kansas. We stopped once or twice for food and gas (nothing exciting, just Taco Bell) and finally ended up in Junction City, KS, around midnight where we quickly fell asleep. Tomorrow: The Great Boring Plains.
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