St. Louis Arch

Near the end of March, Bruce and I traveled to St. Louis for the weekend. We drive down to St. Louis once a month, but the only thing we do down there is go to the temple. This is not a bad thing at all; infact, we love going to the temple. However, St. Louis has so many other cool things to see that we wanted to do something else in addition to our temple trip. We left early on Friday morning, played in town all day, stayed over night, and attended the temple on Saturday. Although we enjoyed what we did in St. Louis, we realized that some things take time, and we need more than just a day to do everything.

The gateway to the west is a landmark commemorating Lewis and Clark and all the other explores and settlers who opened up the west. Nothing can quite compare to the experience we had while trying to make our way to the top of the arch.
We got to the arch visitors center pretty early in the morning, and rushed to the ticket line. After standing for only a few minutes, we were told that the south tram was not currently working so they weren't selling any tickets to the top until they could fix the tram. We browsed through the Westward expansion museum and decided to buy some tickets for the Lewis and Clark movie. Just before the movie began, they started selling tickets for the top again. We quickly jumped in line and purchased tickets to rise to the top immediately after the movie ended. At our appointed time, we jumped in line eager to find our way to the top.
Instead, all we did was

WAIT!

WAIT!!

WAIT!!!
2 hours after our original launch time, we were moved to the north tram line where we waited for an additional 45 minutes. The south tram broke down again, which made everything delayed. Finally our moment had come. . We crawled into the small pod, rode the 3 minutes to the top and saw....


The view was actually quite spectacular. We enjoyed the view and enviornment of being at the top of the arch. It is one of those things that you should do once and only once. I didn't mind the ride, I didn't mind the view, the cost wasn't even that bad, it's the wait I can't stand. Granted that we waited longer than most people to get on the tram, it still took all day which left no time to do anything else we wanted to do in St. Louis. Our tram was supposed to leave at 1:30, and we didn't actually take off until 4:30. 3 hours of time we could have spent at the zoo, the botanical gardens, or the science museum. I can say that I have been to the top of the arch.
Enjoy the pictures.

P.S. I didn't choose this music. It automatically started playing when I pasted the link to the slide show! Sorry! Don't judge me, it was an innocent mistake.

Yes, Success! Music is off. Thanks Tannie!