Day 23

Rest day yahoo, and woke up in a great bed in the Marriott Springhill Suites, Chesterfield, St Louis – beautiful. Everyone down for breakfast as this was included and really would Felipe turn down the chance of a breakfast – no way.

Jack, who had stayed with a friend, came to take Raymond, Andriy, Felipe and Angel to the Budweiser Brewery, which is actually a listed building, and a historic land mark. Me IU stayed at the hotel trying to catch up with the daily blogs, and this is the catch up for Day 23!
We all met up In Blueberry Hill at the Dart restaurant – a great place, and off course it’s called Dart because it has part of the restaurant with dartboards. It’s a fascinating place as the owner owns a theater just blocks away which is a terrific gig venue and goes back to the mid 80’s when he renovated. There are literally hundreds of pics of him with singing stars over the last 25 years plus. Really great history of music over the last ¼ century. Felipe and Angel learnt how to play darts, and boy have they both got different styles!!

From here to the Arch and the old St Louis, right by the Mississippi – the divide, East from West. It’s where people really started the long journey to the West. The river is high and is still flooding paths along the side of it. What a spectacular sight the Arch is, and the ride up is interesting. You get into a 5 seater pod, very small, and tight. There are 8 pods which start off going diagonally up and then I think you end up one at the top with the others hanging below going up! Really very interesting, and some screams from other pods!
Wow once at the top, 630 feet above ground, what a sight – oh Angel had declined to come up as he really didn’t like the idea of the height! No kidding! You could see for miles and I swear that we could see our last camp site. We returned to terra firma and met Angel who had visited some of the Museums that are at the bottom. I took a picture of Rainbow Arch which is in Bryce Canyon and we didn’t get to see!

Jack had got one of his friends who owns a string of pizza parlours, Cecil Whittakers, to donate dinner so off we went to collect it. Collected this and then back to the hotel where we really just relaxed had dinner. Angel and Felipe went off to the hot tub to enjoy a soak. Me I’m finishing up these last three days blogs, and wishing that I had had a hot tub too, my body needs it.

This is the last night in a bed, sadly. Tomorrow we are back in the saddle and off Eastwards.
Cheers all. BP