Gateway to the West

After spending the night in Springfield, IL, we headed southwest and once we got to St. Louis, MO, we looked for parking so we could explore the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, or at least, that's what it used to be called as it's been since upgraded to National Park status and is now called Gateway Arch National Park. Obviously, the arch is the main attraction, but there's enough here for several hours of discovery, as we soon found out. One of the things we decided to do was the St. Louis Arch virtual cache, which proved to be a small distraction as we actually had to leave the grounds and find something nearby to prove that we were there. I guess posting a photo of us at the arch wasn't good enough. 

That particular year, some of the grounds were under reconstruction, so they had limited service for the elevator that took you to the top of the arch and getting there when we did, plus it was the 4th of July and very crowded, meant that the tours were already sold out for that day, so we toured the museum at the base of the arch, plus the museums across the way over at the old St. Louis courthouse.

The museum at the base of the arch gave us good information about the construction of the arch, including a 15 to 20 minute movie that showed how it was constructed. The arch is an impressive architectural feat, standing 63 stories tall. It was completed in 1965 along the banks of the Mississippi River overlooking St. Louis and the neighboring state of Illinois. After touring there for awhile, we then walked the several blocks over to the old St. Louis courthouse where Dred Scott sued for his freedom. There were exhibits here dealing with westward expansion, including areas that were dedicated to the Santa Fe Trail and the Oregon Trail.

For those of you following along on this journey, we also contemplated taking in a baseball game or two as we worked our way across the area. Passing by the Milwaukee Brewers, Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals' baseball stadiums, we had quite a choice. However, it didn't work out on this trip as there's only so many things you can do when you're on a road trip like this. In actuality, the only time a team was home as we were driving by was when we were in Wisconsin, but that was the one day when I didn't have to drive anywhere and I really didn't want to drive several hours to Milwaukee in order to take in a game. I think if I'm going to do something like that, it's going to take a lot more planning and logistics to pull that off.

But back to the road trip at hand. Once we were done touring the two museums, the base of the arch and the courthouse, it was time to hit the road, as we wanted to be in Independence where we were going to spend the night. Driving across Missouri, we stopped here and there to find a couple of geocaches, nothing that really stand out, with the exception of the virtual cache we did at the arch itself.

Pulling into Independence, we felt like we'd had a good day. We got to our motel, then found a nearby place to eat and then watched the fireworks play out in several different directions from our room's window. Not a bad 4th of July for my youngest's first out of state 4th, and the first I'd experienced since I was 3 years old. The next day, we would be touring Harry Truman's house and the Harry Truman Presidential Library.

Forgetting about things

Most of you know know that I enjoy hiking.  Yeah, tell us something else we don't already know.  Anyway....  I was looking through my Fitbit app on my phone and noticed some "workouts" I'd done.  I was thinking that I don't remember recording anything from June 19th and then it dawned on me that these were hikes that I'd done two years ago.

Now, everything made sense.  So I decided to keep track of my latest hike with the app and see what the map looked liked.  The weather was overcast this morning, which made it perfect for a more strenuous kind of hike, so I got the gear I needed and drove the Jeep over to the neighborhood where I could access the Thompson Creek walking trail.  From there, I accessed the trail/fireroad which took me up into Johnson's Pasture.  If you're following along at home, I'm moving on the map in a clockwise direction.

That trail eventually took me over to the Claremont Hills Wilderness Loop trail and I just kept going from there.  At the very top of the map is approximately where I encountered the bear that I wrote about in this post.  At about that time, it's pretty much downhill so my pace picked up.  At the top of the loop, I was averaging about 22 minutes per mile, so you can see that I picked it up on the downhill side so that I was averaging over 3 miles per hour.  

Another place in the app, I can access how much elevation gain this hike was and it was about 1200 feet of elevation gain overall. Not really that tough since that's a 7 mile hike, but compress that 1200 miles down to the first 3 and a half miles and it's a little bit more impressive.  Either way, I fell I'm doing much better on my hiking stamina than I was in the past.  I'm hoping for some more cooler mornings so I can get out again before the summer heat really takes over. Now I just need to remember to record my hikes into the app.

Happy 4th to everyone.  Be safe.