Lewis & Clark - St. Louis, MO

Day 4, again, we hopped into our luxury tour bus and joined the same tour guide, Dea, who was wonderful. The name of her company is “Are We There Yet.” She enlightened us on not only the history of the area, but the architecture, industry, cultures, and what life was like years ago as opposed to today. We learned that St. Louis has the oldest market in the country. It came into operation in the 1700s and is still operating today! The reason for that is that the woman who owned it, left the market to the city when she died, with the stipulation that it must remain a market. If it ceases to operate as a market, every living heir to her must be found and given their share. So, needless to say, the city is making sure that it operates as a market.

Dea took us on an unscheduled tour of the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis. (This is what is so great about having a knowledgeable tour guide) The inside of the cathedral is similar to the main level of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. The Bishop resides here, so all of the schools come to the Basilica for confirmations rather than the Bishop traveling to their respective parish. Most schools also have their graduations here too.

We then did a driving tour of Forest Park and Tower Grove Park. What beautiful homes and much cheaper than in Washington, D.C. area. Forest Park was the home of the 1904 World’s Fair and contains the Art, History, and Science Museums, Zoo, Jewel Box greenhouse, and the Muny Theater. Our tour was supposed to be of the Botanical Garden, which has the largest traditional Japanese garden in North America, but some of our guests preferred to go to the zoo. SO, because our company is “flexible” we were able to accommodate the choice of either the gardens or the zoo. We went to the zoo so I’ll have to tell you about the gardens on our next L&C trip. The zoo is rated on of the best in North America, right up there with the San Diego Zoo. It was fabulous. Bobby, Marcia, Bill & I enjoyed running around the park capturing the animals in photos, ourselves included.

We had the most filling meal I’ve ever had at the Hometown Buffet, which is like Country Kitchen. The location we visited was one of the best. Since we ate a late lunch, I decided to make it my lunch/dinner, tried a little of almost everything and topped it off with 2 (yes I said 2) desserts. Bill was a little better than me, he had only 1 plate of food, but topped it off with 2 desserts.

Our last stop was the Anheuser-Busch Brewery. We first toured the Budweiser Clydesdale stables, then the lager cellar, packaging plant,
finishing in the hospitality room for a full glass of our choice of beer, not just a little paper cup either. We were told you could have 2 glasses, but I don’t think they were counting. Bill likes the darker beer, while I prefer the ale.

Once we got back home and had our trip meeting for the next day of travel, we were pleasantly surprised by a visit from our Florida friends Sue and Dan Hertz. They wanted us to join them for dinner (just a quick hamburger). I was still stuffed from lunch! So, off to Culvers for what they call butter burgers. They are also known for their frozen custard. I have a hard time turning down frozen custard, but since I had 2 desserts for lunch, which included ice cream on top of each, and since I had to sit there while everyone ate, I ordered the smallest hamburger on the menu. Now I can say I ate a butter burger, and it was very good.

We left St. Charles and headed for Platte City, MO, by way of country roads. Our trip will be 308 miles. It’s taking us forever to do because it’s very twisty, turny, hilly, but very scenic. All I kept thinking was I’d rather be doing in our RV as opposed to on the river, pulling my boat upstream like Lewis and Clark!

Lewis & Clark - St. Louis, MO

Day 3, we hopped into our luxury tour bus complete with guide and headed for St. Louis. Our first stop was the Gateway Arch. That was an experience in itself to get to the top of the arch so that we could look out the windows over the beautiful city. If you are claustrophobic you might want to think twice about doing that!

Below are the stadium and court house.

We watched the National Geographic movie on Lewis & Clark which was the best that I’ve seen.

We had lunch at Union Station where the Marriott has a hotel with a beautiful lobby. We stopped by to visit and found the whispering arch at the front door. If you stand at each side of the arch on both ends of the entrance, your whispers can be heard at the other end of the arch! Below is the top part of the arch. Wonder how they figured that out!

We then visited the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center and Camp River Dubois located in Illinois.

We ended our day viewing the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers from the Illinois as well as the Missouri side. You can tell which river is which because the Missouri is always very muddy. The farmers used to say it was “too thick to drink and too thin to plow.”

We ended our day by having dinner with our good friends, Ed and Shirley, who we met on our East Coast Historical Trip. They live in the area so we had a wonderful dinner at Pia’s, an Italian Restaurant in the quaint town of St. Charles. We will meet up again in Utah because they will be joining us on our Grand Circle Tour. We are so excited!