190: traveling to the top of the arch

Day 8:

Who knew you could take a little pod to the top of the Gateway Arch? I never realized that until I started researching things to do on our trip. Us, along with all the rest of St. Louis seemed to have the same idea. Luckily we bypassed the ticket lines by purchasing them early online. It was almost as if you were getting on a ride at Disneyland. Each pod could carry 5 people. The doorway was no more than 4 feet tall so it was definitely not for those suffering from claustrophobia. It took 4 minutes to get to the top, 630 ft. At the top they had little windows to look out of. The view was incredible. The boys loved it. The ride was 3 minutes going down.

The old courthouse and city park

Busch Stadium

I'm telling you, there were so many different ways to take a picture of the arch..this was my shadow picture. I also got a reflection of the arch in the windows of the buildings across the street.

Following the ride to the top, we took a Riverboat cruise down the Mississippi on the Tom Sawyer. It was blasting hot outside! 

 I didn't make it in very many of the pictures and the ones I did make it in are not really my favorites, but my kids, when looking through our albums, need to know that I existed! It seems I'm always the one behind the lens.

After our riverboat cruise, we headed to the Missouri Botanical Gardens. It was absolutely lovely there, but so dang hot! We tried to make the best of it but it was hard not to complain. We only had a couple of hours to explore all the beauty but found ourselves at the children's park in their water fountains. Even Jim and I were running through the water..at that point, we didn't care if we looked like white trash soaking wet in our clothes, at least we were cool!

 A cool labyrinth maze. I took this picture from the lookout hut above.

There were so many gorgeous flowers in the the climatron {a large glass building acting like a terrarium with various tropical foliage}