Gateway Arch St. Louis, MO

There are no places to dock a private boat near the famous Gateway Arch in St. Louis so we drove there today. This National Monument is 630 feet high making it the tallest monument in America...even higher than Mount Rushmore.

It was built to represent the importance of our nation spreading out to the west with explorers like Louis & Clark . Architects competed in 1947 to design this monument and Eero Saarinen, a Finnish-American won. Sadly he never lived to see it built... died at 51 yrs of age.  The structure took from Feb. 1963 to Oct. 1965 to complete. 

The arch is a Catenary Curve... the math folks will understand this....amazingly it appears to be taller than it is wide but it is the exact same width as it's height.  We saw a 30 minute film about the building of the Arch.  I cannot begin to explain the engineering which is fascinating but that is probably more than you want to know anyway.

So here are some photos.  It is impossible on land to get back far enough to take a complete picture...hope to do this from the River this week when we leave Alton, IL

64 steps to the bottom of the Arch on the river side.

There is a large grassy field beyond the Arch.  Here a soccer game was under way.  Notice the shadow of the Arch on the field.

The Entrance to the Arch is actually underground.  In this large area are a couple theaters and a museum. To get in we had to go through security just like at an airport.  We showed our Golden Age Pass (National Parks give seniors a big discount!), answered questions like, "Are you claustrophobic?" & got tickets to ride to the top of the Arch.

Here is why they ask you about how you handle close quarters... they have a pod car sample by the ticket counter for all to examine.  Outside:

Inside the Pod Car... FIVE people can sit in this one pod car!

It takes 4 minutes to get to the top and 3 minutes to descend.... Walter said when he went long ago he doesn't think they had the doors with windows in these pods.  Now you can kinda see that you are rising up... you see, if you counted them, 1,076 steps!  NO! We didn't count them... just asked the tour lady.  

At the top when you get out there is still a little curve up left to walk.... in this photo people are looking out the very small windows they have on each side of the arch.

View of City side.

View of River side.

Inside our pod going down... there was actually one empty seat in this car!

Outside several carriages waited to take folks on city tours.

There was much more to see in St. Louis but we just can't see everything. Tomorrow we plan to tour a museum here close to our marina.

When we arrived back at our boat it was nearly dark but we could see that another Looper we know had arrived...they must have been out to dinner as no one was on the boat.  We have not seen them since Norfolk back in May! They seem pretty young compared to us so we might have to tease them about finally catching up with the old folks. When we both left Norfolk on the same day and bright and early they congratulated us on being up so early!!  We will enjoy catching up with Eddie & Linda on Spiritus tomorrow.