St. Louis, Missouri

Mile 5930

Sorry, it's been almost two full days and 650 miles since the last blog. We haven't had easy access to the internet for awhile because we were in the middle of Indiana farmland for a long time. We are in St. Louis, Missouri now at a place called Coffee Cartel in a really nice part of town called Central Park East. We really need to get caught up, so without further ado...


Monday morning after we left Columbus, we took Interstate 71 south to Cincinnati. A rather uneventful drive as you can't see much from the freeway. Just a lot of farmland. We passed through Cincinnati rather quickly and crossed the Ohio River at mile 5393 into Covington, Kentucky around 12:30pm. Very happy to find that it isn't the "Cincitucky" that we had heard about, but quite a nice riverfront town with a gorgeous view of the Cincinnati skyline. We crossed the Ohio via the Roebling Suspension Bridge which was the longest suspension bridge in the world when it was built in 1866. It served as the prototype for John A. Roebling's design of the Brooklyn Bridge for which he gained greater fame. It also exceeded the Cincinnati bridge in length when it opened in New York in 1883 breaking his own record. From Covington, we drove along the river to Newport where we had our very first ever White Castle experience. For those of you who have never been to the midwest (or seen the movie) White Castle is America's oldest hamburger fast food restaurant chain known for it's small-sized square burgers called "slyders." White Castle was arguably made world famous, or at least world known, originally by the Beastie Boys back in the 80s on their "Licensed to Ill" album. White Castle was made an even bigger name more recently by Harold and Kumar. Never saw the movie actually. Gotta rent it now. By the way, for those of you who read the blog really closely on the Pacific Northwest trip last year, got caught up on the whole "Deadwood" series, still haven't seen "A River Runs Through It" though. Go back and read it, you'll get it. Anyway, outside of the novelty of the small, square White Castle hamburgers, one of us was indifferent to it otherwise. The other one gobbled it up voraciously.

After lunch, we crossed back into Ohio and the city of Cincinnati. We drove around just for a little bit to see the developing riverfront area, but didn't get to see much else of the city. Indianapolis was on our horizon.


We crossed the Indiana state line at mile 5422 about a quarter 'til 2pm and got to Indianapolis at about 3pm and made our first stop at the state capitol building. By the way, some of you are wondering about this obsession with state capitols. It started quite by accident on the last trip. There are some cities that don't have much going on, or at least that we can see from our singular paths through many of the places we have been. Helena, the capitol of Montana, happened to be one of the those places. We stopped there looking for a grocery store to replenish the ice supply and came across the capitol building. The building and the grounds surrounding it were so beautiful that we just had to take a picture. We followed that with Cheyenne, Wyoming and Denver, Colorado, and it just became a "thing." Regretfully, we didn't come up with this when we passed through Sacramento, California, Eugene, Oregon, or Olympia, Washington before that. Now it has become sort of a challenge to see how many state capitols we can get pictures of.


We drove around the central part of downtown Indianapolis briefly and then turned to the northwest part of the city which is home to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Actually, it's in the town of Speedway which is completely surrounded by the city of Indianapolis. The speedway complex was built in 1909 and the first running of the "500" was in 1911, but it was billed the "International 500-Mile Sweepstakes Race." It didn't become commonly recognized as the "Indianapolis 500" until after WWII. You can actually drive under the track into the infield where the Hall of Fame Museum is located.

After that, we headed west, unfortunately right in the middle of rush hour. But congestion slowly transitioned into a rather pleasant drive through Indiana farmland on a single lane highway. We found a campground at Raccoon Lake State Recreation area near the town of Rockville, Indiana. It's a little under 60 miles due west from Indianapolis. We got there early enough to set up camp in the daylight. Actually it wasn't that early. You could still see daylight until after 9pm there. It's only about 10 miles from the Illinois state line and the Central Time Zone. Shouldn't have said anything about the wonderful weather, because the humidity started to kick in. Nowhere near where it could have been, but it got a little sticky.



Apparently, Parke County, where Rockville is located, is recognized as being the "Covered Bridge Capital of the World." So we got up early Tuesday morning so that we'd have plenty of time to make a bacon and eggs breakfast, and break down camp. We spent most of the morning driving around Parke County visiting various covered bridges. You can tell that a lot of them are not shown as originally constructed though. From the outside they look like it, but when you go inside you can see how much refurbishment was done. Probably wouldn't be safe to drive through otherwise. In fact, many of them, apparently, have been moved from their original locations. We actually saw one being constructed, or rebuilt. The main road to it was closed from both ends, but we found a back way to get around it. There is such a large network of farmland backroads that it was pretty easy to do. They probably construct the framework and place the shell of the old bridge on top of it. It was interesting, but after awhile, all the bridges started to look the same, so it was time to head west again. And yes, saw "The Bridges of Madison County."


We crossed into Illinois and the Central Time Zone at mile 5705 around 1:30/12:30pm and got to Springfield, the capitol of Illinois about two and half hours later. Visted the capitol building and then went to the Lincoln Home National Historic Site where Abraham Lincoln lived from 1837 until 1861. Unfortunately, the house was covered in scaffolding and didn't make for a very nice picture. Didn't know they had scaffolding in the mid-1800s. He was also buried in Springfield and we wanted to visit the Lincoln Tomb State Historic Site, but dogs are usually not allowed in cemeteries, especially historical ones like that, so we didn't bother.


From there, we jumped on Interstate 55, part of which is also Historic Route 66, and headed southwest toward St. Louis. At mile 5925 we crossed the Mississippi River into Missouri around 6pm. Despite it being close to the end of rush hour, we found parking walking distance from the Gateway Arch rather easily. The area around the Arch was relatively empty as well. But we were lucky enough to find a spot the was virtually deserted to snap this picture. Don't know why no one else was there, because it was such a beautiful site to take pictures. From there we drove west through downtown St. Louis until we stumbled upon this area known as Central Park East. For a Tuesday night, it is surprisingly busy. Perhaps the change in weather has brought everyone out. We hit some showers coming into St. Louis, but now it is a beautiful night with the humidity almost completely gone and a strong cool breeze blowing though the streets. If you come here, Maryland Plaza at the corner of Euclid, where Coffee Cartel is located, is the place to go. In fact, as we sit here at close to midnight, Coffee Cartel is still crowded. They are open 24 hours and they've had a long line at the counter all night. And as we've looked across the street to all the other restaurants throughout the evening, everything else was packed most of the night as well. The ample outdoor seating on this street was full everywhere, as everyone was enjoying the cool night. Everything else is starting to close up now though. Coffee Cartel is still cranking away. Anyway, speaking of "close to midnight" and "closing up" it's time to retire for the evening.