Jefferson National Expansion Memorial

When most people think of St. Louis, they think of the Arch - but do you realize that's not even it's name?  Technically, it's the Gateway Arch, and it's part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.  See, the kids weren't the only ones who learned something on this trip...

While this wasn't our first sighting of the Arch - we could see it from the freeway for a few miles - it was the first place we could manage to get a picture.

We were so excited to get to the Arch, I didn't stop or think about pictures until we were there.  Thus, our next pic is of the kids first touching the Arch...

Mary & I had been in the Arch twenty-two years ago, and it was during summer, so my previous experience was one of long lines and waiting.  Thus, I herded the kids right down to get our tickets before anything else (well, okay, we hit the bathrooms first...).  Ironically, even though we had to wait in a line for about 15 minutes to buy our tickets, we went right on up to the trolleys, and were aboard immediately.  This pic comes from a display of the trolley outside the line - they prefer you take your picture there instead of slowing down the loading process...

However, this is the actual door to our trolley (before it came)!

Although nervous about going up, once at the top, the kids were surprisingly calm about the height.  They started out by looking out the windows on the river side...

Here are the views of Illinois and the Mississippi River.

Then, we switched over to the St. Louis side...  "Look, dad!  Those people down there look like ants!!"

Here we are at the top of the arch - 63 stories up!

The trip down was a whole minute quicker than the trip up (3 vs. 4 min), so the kids believed they could feel the trolley going faster...

Next, we wound our way through the museum portion of the monument.  It had all kinds of cool displays about the building of the arch, as well as the building of a nation.

Capt. Clark started off by telling us of the importance of the Peace Medals they used with the natives.

Red Cloud then told us about his problems with the interpreters lying about what the treaty said.

This display was broken...

The kiddos looked at everything, and then got to work doing the questions and activities in their Junior Ranger booklets.

There were cool displays about all aspects of the westward expansion - this is from the Pacific tribes.

A "soddie" - a prairie house made from sod...

The start (and finish) was a statue of Jefferson, and quotes about his dream of a grand nation from one coast to the other.

A quick pic up from under the arch as we got ready to leave.  That thing is really tall!!

While we were waiting to cross the street to get back to our car, we took one look back and realized this was probably the best pic of the day...