Current location: West Memphis, AR, N 35 10.110', W 090 11.337' elev 191 ft.

On Saturday, I had a great day in St. Louis. In the morning, I packed up my tent and started driving towards St. Louis on I-70. On the radio, XM had coverage of Live 8. I was pretty pleased to hear XM had 7 stations dedicated to coverage, one for each of the six main stages, and 1 dedicated to playing the highlights. My favorite performances (of the ones I heard) were Green Day, and Black Eyed Peas. While XM had extensive coverage, its unfortunate that if you didn't have XM or an AOL account, your exposure to the concert was very limited. MTV had some coverage, but from what I heard, it was mostly inane banter by VJs who had no idea what they were doing or who most of the musical acts were, or the significance or history of what was occurring. From what I understand, MTV even cut to commercial during the performance by Pink Floyd, the first united performance of the core members of the band since 1981. Being able to listen to Live 8 on the drive in, I knew I was in for a good day; plus the weather was perfect, low 80's not too humid, not a cloud in the sky.

On the drive to St. Louis, you can start to see the Gateway Arch from about 20 miles away, and it is quite a sight. It just rises up and above the Mississippi river and dominates the sky. I noticed that the Arch sort of has an illusion; since it is practically two dimensional compared to its height, it is sometimes tough to distinguish the orientation of the arch from far away. You can't tell if you are viewing it at one angle, or the angle perpendicular to that. I drove around the city a bit to get my bearings. I found the ballpark, the Arch and the Anheuser-Busch Brewery tour.

My first activity for the day was the brewery tour, which is about 2 miles from downtown. Especially when compared to the Coca-Cola tour, the Budweiser tour is exceptionally great! First of all, it is free, and the tours leave every ten minutes, so there is no waiting. On the tour, the first stop is the barn where they mate and keep the clydesdale horses. Then the real parts of the tour begin. They bring you to the Beechwood aging room, which smells like delicious beer. Just in this warehouse room, there were 16 tanks, stacked 4 by 4, each holding 200,000 barrels worth of beer (a barrel is 31 gallons). Very huge, very impressive. I was always under the impression that beechwood aging meant the barrels were made of beachwood, but they actually spread beechwood chips on the floor of the tanks, and this adds to the carbonation of the beer. The aging lasts at least 4 days in the large tanks. Next stop, they showed a short video about the history of the company, before showing us the ingredients used in making beer, and then the actual brewing room, controlling the manufacture process. Finally, they brought us to another building and showed a film on the canning and bottling operation, and then showed the actual canning operation. It was completely amazing, up to date, and blows Coke right out of the water. The final part of the tour, the highlight, they bring you to a room where you can sample the beer for free, up to two full glasses of beer. I tried Budweiser Select and Michelob Ultra.



They didn't allow photos at most of the locations on the tour, but I did get some shots

Next up, I found a parking garage downtown near the ballpark and the Gateway Arch, and made my way to the Arch. There was a huge fair going on downtown on the waterfront under the arch, called Fair St. Louis, which made it a little difficult to drive around.



I had always heard you could go up into the arch, and this was my plan, so I made way over there and discovered there is a huge museum run by the National Park Service below the ground at the arch. The whole monument is called the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. I think because of the fair, there was a long wait in the heat just to get into the area below the arch. Once in, I walked up to the ticket desk and got a ticket to the arch which included a viewing of a National Geographic film on the Lewis and Clark expedition. The ticket cost $14, but with my National Park Pass, I got $3 off. The film was first, but I had about 15 minutes before it started, so I walked around, visited the gift shop, and picked up some postcards and the map and guide of the monument (which cost $.25 here, though it is free at every other park and monument I have visited).

I went to the film which lasted 45 minutes, and then went up in the tram to the top of the Arch, which while it had very small viewing windows, afforded quite a nice view of the city.




I came down from the arch with a bit of time to spare before the baseball game, so I took some photos of the Mississippi, and then went to Busch Stadium to catch the baseball game. There were thousands of people milling in the streets waiting to get into the game. I got to the ticket window, and tried to get the cheapest seat, but the seats were completely sold out. They were selling standing room only tickets for $12, which I thought was bit high. I got into the stadium, and it is a nice nice stadium. It opened in 1966, but it is much better than the other stadiums I've seen from that era, so I can't understand why they are building a new Busch Stadium next door to open in 2006. The fans in St. Louis are spectacular, and very knowledgeable. The announced attendance for the game was forty eight thousand, and practically every seat was filled. I was lucky enough to find a real nice seat to sit in for the game, about 40 rows from the field, on the third base line. By the fourth inning, a couple who also had SRO tickets came and sat next to me, and we chatted for most of the game. They told me all about the team, how their fans travel to other cities to watch the games like Red Sox fans do, and they expressed pleasure and congratulations for the Sox' world series win. They also talked about the new stadium, and said that the team completely pulled the wool over the tax-payers eyes. They don't need a new stadium in St. Louis, and so the stadium was approved for public funding before the public even had heard about it. The stadium is completely funded by tax-payers, and yet the team will own the stadium.

The game was very exciting, and 99% of the fans stayed until the end. Unfortunately, the Cardinals lost to the Rockies, 3-1, but the Cardinals had several chances to score, and the fans were really paying attention. Once again, they didn't need to be told when to cheer and give the team support, in contrast to Yankees fans. A neat sight on the way out of the park was seeing a column that had some graffiti that read Red Sox fans were here, 10/27/2005.



I had been told that there was going to be fireworks for the Fair and for Independence Day. I regretted having parked in the garage, but I made my way down to the Arch area to watch the fireworks. Incredibly, I found a great spot, with a direct view of the arch, and I knew I was in for a treat, because the fireworks would be exploding in the middle of the arch. People started to fill in around me, and the fireworks started at about 9:40. The fireworks lasted 20 minutes, and were an excellent cap to the day. I got a few photos, one of which I am going to submit to a photo contest by the National Park Service.





So, I had an excellent day in St. Louis. See the rest of the photos here. After the fireworks, the streets were filled with 400,000 people, so I jut walked back to the garage, and waited about an hour and a half until the garage emptied. At this time, I was very tired, so I just drove until I found a cheap motel and crashed.