The Beautiful Gateway Arch of Missouri
Missouri’s Gateway Arch was one attraction our group decided we couldn’t miss. It wasn’t far from the Missouri-Illinois border, and we all gazed out the van windows at the gleaming Gateway Arch while celebrating that we’d crossed over into the second state along our Route 66 trip. Once at Gateway Arch National Park, all four of us piled out of the van and jogged toward the Gateway Arch to take pictures. Standing at the bottom of the arch, we really had to crane our necks backward to see the top (and shield our eyes from all the sunlight glinting off the steel structure). After several group pictures beneath the arch, including one where we managed to perform a circus-worthy display of acrobatic stances, we headed into the museum to get tickets to ride up the elevator-like tram cars to the top of the arch. While we waited for our time slot, the four of us watched the museum’s Gateway Arch documentary and fanned through the museum. We learned that the Gateway Arch was designed by a Finnish-American architect named Eero Saarinen, that it took about 2.5 years to complete, and cost thirteen million dollars to build. All of us were shocked to learn that builders of the Gateway Arch hadn’t worn harnesses, even hundreds of feet up in the air! We watched the video footage with bated breaths, our stomachs feeling queasy.
Finally, it was time to ride a tram car up to the top of the Gateway Arch. We took the walkway down to the tram cars, a chill of anticipation running up our spines as we walked beneath the large letters spelling out “To The Top.” As we each passed through the small entry door into our tram car, Olivia said what we were all thinking: “Wow, this looks like some sort of space pod!” With it’s small, round pod-like structure and white lights, it did indeed look like a space pod! The glass doors slid shut, sealing us in, and then the stair-step elevator mechanism kicked in. Our pod would slide upward at a tilted angle, then straighten itself out, and repeat that many times over. It was quite an interesting sensation. After four minutes, our tram car reached the top. It’s hard to say who was more eager to finally get a glimpse out the windows of the 630-foot-tall Gateway Arch. The view was even more spectacular than we could have imagined, and we felt like birds looking over the St. Louis Skyline and the Mississippi River. It was especially cool to look down on the Old Courthouse, with its mint-colored dome and white pillars. After many, many pictures were taken, we rode our tram car back down to the Gateway Arch museum, and were soon on our way to our next Route 66 adventure.
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