Over the River

STATES VISITED: Indiana / Illinois / Missouri

Time for us to make some serious mileage. We picked up breakfast from the bakery at the Marsh grocery in Nora, right across the street from North Central -- what a hoot -- and hit the road around noon. We stopped for lunch at a Wendy's in Terre Haute, then crossed the Wabash River (sycamore trees and all) and then the state line, entering Illinois and a new time zone. (It was kinda cool to watch the numbers on our cell phones change). A bathroom-and-soda stop in Vidalia -- the ex-capital of Illinois! former home of Abe Lincoln, celebrating the 200th anniversary of his birth!! -- just so we could actually touch Illinois soil for a moment.


At last, around 4pm Central Time, the Gateway Arch began to peek over the horizon, and soon after we were rolling across the Mississippi into St. Louis. Up here, when it hasn't yet merged with the Ohio, the Mississipp isn't quite as impressive as it gets to be later on -- wide and muddy but not yet mighty. Still, crossing the Mississippi says we're really out of the East at last -- major milestone.

St. Louis downtown looks great, though it was a pain to arrive at the start of a holiday weekend, when everybody was trying to leave work early. (Major metropolis + spread-out suburbs + no mass transit = rush hour nightmare.)

We checked into our hotel, one of a couple dozen Drury Inns in St. Louis -- the one closest to Busch Stadium, naturally. They've done a great job of renovating a historic building, the former International Fur Exchange. It's decorated with Old West frontier details (dark wood, tasseled drapes, tufted upholstery) and down in the lobby there's a scene of Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea trailblazing the west.


Hugh and I took a walk around downtown right away, checking out the architecture etc. Stretching westward from the Arch, a series of blocks have been laid out in a really inviting public mall full of sculpture, water features, and plantings. Here's a few random shots of it:




































I guess if you lived in St. Louis this City Mall would get old hat, but for a visitor, it's a cool place to hang out. The design of this whole downtown area really works -- I love how they use the Arch to frame the old historic courthouse.

Unfortunately, we got here too late in the day to go do the Arch -- have to save that for tomorrow. We did, however, discover a great view of the Arch from a corridor window in our hotel:












In just a couple of weeks, St. Louis is going to be hosting the MLB All-Star Game, so they've added some mini-arches covered with logos of all the major league teams. I tell you, this whole city seems to be delirious about this impending event. Funny, when the All-Star Game came to New York last summer it barely made a ripple . . . .








Well, baseball is what we came for, so baseball is what we did. We headed over to the new Busch stadium (opened in 2006) to watch the Cardinals play the San Francisco Giants, whom we saw play back in 2005 when we did our last baseball tour, that one of the West Coast. Busch Stadium from the outside looks like one of your retro classic stadiums, but inside it's surprisingly big. Clearly, though, they've got a huge local fan base, because the place was packed with folks in red Cards T-shirts. Our seats were rather far up, which we didn't expect considering how much we'd paid for them.


However, our seats were attached to a "party box", which meant we could walk inside for free food and drink (delicious brisket, chicken, hot dogs, nachos) or to escape the St. Louis swelter by sitting in air-conditioned comfort. There were closed-circuit TVs everywhere, too, to make up for the distance from the field. It's the old arena-concert conundrum: As soon as they give you a screen to stare at, you find yourself staring at the screen instead of watching the live action.


One cool design detail of this stadium: at the end of every row of seats there's a cast-iron Cardinal logo. Naturally there's also a big plush Cardinal mascot running around.

This game felt a lot more exciting than the Reds game the other night, even though we were far from the action on the field. Barry Zito was pitching for the Giants, and he didn't hit his groove until the second inning, by which time the Cards had already hammered him for 3 runs. Albert Pujols got intentional walks most every time he came up to the plate -- the crowd booed like crazy. The Cards pitcher, Todd Wellemeyer, had a shutout until the 7th inning, which kept the tension high. In the end the Cardinals won 5-3. Not a lot of home runs, but plenty of guys getting on base, so there was always something going on. Good game -- and very pleasant to be able to walk two blocks back to our rooms afterwards, while all the other spectators were still sitting in traffic!