This is the first in a series of articles on my two day trip to St. Louis Missouri.
I’m writing it first because it’s the quickest and easiest one to do!
I was in St. Louis with an elderly friend on Thursday and Friday, December 13 and 14th. Friday was our touring day.
Although I had known about the trip since late November, I hadn’t had time to do any research into St. Louis. I did look up Missouri in my Collector’s Edition Passport to your National Parks, and noted the Gateway Arch was there. But the woman I was traveling with was “the boss” and so we’d be going where she wanted to go. I was going along as her chauffeur.
That’s not to say that I didn’t think about bringing along my Passport just in case we went to the Gateway Arch…but by the time it was time to leave for St. Louis I’d forgotten about it.
My elegant but heavy National Parks Passport book, which I neglected to carry with me.
We were staying in a hotel near the St. Louis Airport, about 15 miles east of the city of St. Louis proper.
Friday was our touring day, and it turned out my friend did want to go see the Gateway Arch – she’d been there about 10 years earlier.
I drove us into downtown and parked in a ramp that Google had told me was near the Arch. We parked and started walking. It was a cold day – high 40s, with overcast and foggy skies but no rain while we were out and about.
We asked people the way to the Arch and they all pointed us in the right direction. There were signs in the sidewalk once in a while, but frankly they were useless.
The first building we came to, however, was the Old Courthouse, part of the Gateway Arch National Park which in turn is part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.
The architecture of the building intrigued us first of all, then the statues of Dred Scott – for it was in this courtroom that he sued for his freedom and lost.
More about that in a future article
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The point to be made in this article is that it’s a National Park site and so there was a gift shop inside I picked up a few souvenirs and then saw the Passport station. Immediately I remembered my nice, elegant, heavy Deluxe Passport and swore.
The Old Courthouse, part of the Gateway Arch National Park which is part of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. It was in this courthouse that Dred Scott sued for his freedom, and lost.
However the very helpful clerk in the shop of course had several strips of blank paper available for people just like me, so I was able to get the following stamps:
The 40th Anniversary of the Gateway Arch and 50th Anniversary (special designs), circular designs with the day’s date for the Gateway Arch National Park and the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, and circular stamps with the day’s at for the Underground Railroad Freedom Network and the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail.
The Gateway Arch obscured by fog
The Arch was just a short walk away. Although one can go down in the “basement” of the Arch to see the Museum of Westward Expansion for free, it costs money to go up into the Arch, which we did. More about that in a future entry.
The NPS had a Passport Station here as well, so I made the same stamps as well, just to be on the safe side, and of course had to get my stretched pennies, a $5 medallion of the St. Louis Arch, and an NPS token of the Arch.
The “passport stations” at the National Parks provide sheets of paper that people can use to put stamps on, if they don’t bring their books!
Upon my return home, I cut out the stamps carefully and glued them into the appropriate space in my passport. Unfortunately, neither shop had the 1986 Midwest Regional Stamp featuring the Arch – I’ll have to get that on eBay.
The two stamps I’ve glued in the appropriate slot in my book
We were close to another National Park site – White Haven, the home of Ulysses S. Grant, but we didn’t have time to visit it even if we’d known about it.
However, this trip to St. Louis may become an annual event, so we’ll have a chance to go visit that next year.
