Day 11- A big circle tour of St Louis, and the start of the Lewis and Clark Trail

Bette let me sleep in today, all the way until 9 am- we ate breakfast, and then started on what turned out to be a circle tour trip of St Louis.  One of the posters on my National Parks Stamp club had posted some suggestions for things to do in addition to downtown St Louis things, and when we looked at it, it worked out perfectly. 

I had planned to visit many Louis and Clark Tail sites on this trip, and as it turns out St Louis is basically where the trek started from in May of 1804. 

We actually reversed the route from the sequence shown here, because the last stop didn't open until 12 noon. 

In order, we stopped at:
1. William Clarks gravesite at the Bellefontaine Cemetery in down town St Louis
2.  "The world's largest catsup bottle" in Collinsville, Illinois
3.  The "point of departure Lewis and Clark Illinois State Historic Site in Hartford
4.  We added a stop at the National Great Rivers Museum in Alton Ill.
5.  We went antique shopping in Alton Illinois
6.  We next went to the Lewis and Clark Boathouse and Museum at St Charles, Mo.
7.  Last stop of the day was our old home in Chesterfield at Denton Ridge Court.
8.  We also make a quick stop at Michaels and Wal Mart after we got back in and settled for a bit.

The details:
Stop 1 the William Clark gravesite at Bellefontaine Cemetery
We got messed up by the GPS due to a new exit that it didn't know about, then got further messed up when there was construction at the next exit and our exit was closed, so we had to get off one earlier exit, and that threw the route for a loop.  It was looking like maybe a bad day.... lots of chatter from the co-driver, but we perservered, and found the cemetery. 
The cemetery holds a who's-who of dead St Louisians, the Busch's of Busch beer, the Lambert of Lambert field, Thomas Hart Benton the poet, and several other somewhat locally famous St Louisans...

We had loose directions on how to get there, lots of left turns, but it was immediately clear we were in no man's land, as the place is huge, 315 acres, and has lots of dead folks..  (all of them).  So after being yelled at by the co-driver, I sheepishly went back to the office and got a nice booklet and map directing me to the very place.  Well, we had a bit of a struggle even with the map, but lo and behold, we found it. 

As you can see, pretty impressive burial site-  Several family are also interred there.  There are several nice markers that explain that this was the Clark of Meriwhether and Clark, blah blah blah. 

Well, with that out of the way, on to our next target, the World's Largest Catsup bottle- seriously.  Here it is....

It seems the manufacturing plant for this brand of catsup was in this town so there it is.  What I won't do to get a road oddity like this!  There are several more planned for this trip...  Thanks to my Park Stamp friend for the heads up on this one. 

Then, off to our first major Lewis and Clark stop on this trip, well, after Clark's burial place, the Point of Departure site located in Hartford, Illinois.  Trouble finding it, bad GPS address, but a call ahead fixed that, and armed with new correct address, off we went-  about 9 miles from our last stop. 
This is a very beautiful state park building, no charge, but they ask for donations.

Inside, there are several exhibits that explain the Lewis and Clark trek, and also some very kid friendly things to do.  There is an example of the keel boats they used for this part of the trip, here.....

I got a very nice pin here, and this is the first is what I hope will be several Lewis and Clark pins, figure I'll do a seperate shadow box for this Trail....

From there, we added a stop on the way to Alton, Illinois, based on information gleaned at this stop-  We went to the National Great Rivers Museum, outside of Alton Illinois, at the Melvin Price Locks and Dam.   This was a real bonus.  Beautiful Corps of Engineers building, located at one of the big locks that push traffic up and down the Mississippi river, really quite a big operation.  They had several excellent exhibits, free, explaining the river system, movies, an interior of a tug boat so you could play captain, etc.   They didn't have any pins here, but I got a couple of postcards, and some plastic drinking cups, and three pencils,  Tax money hard at work.  

Here's a shot of the actual lock apparatus, it was about 10 stories tall, and about 700 feet long....  Big operation....

Buster decided he would pose on the rocks outside of the museum building:

After this, we headed on into the city of Alton Illinois, which is like an antique hunter's paradise.  We used to go there about every other weekend when we lived in Chesterfield before, and it was fun to visit some of the old haunts. 

We made several finds, I got 5 Harley Davidson club pins, and I found Bette a very unique perpetual calendar, which I forgot to take a picture of-  and it was only 6 dollars, so score!   Bette found nice gifts for our pals the Kingstons and also the Colagiovannis, so it was a fun productive relaxing shopping trip.  We love Alton!

The we headed to the last Lewis and Clark site for the day, the Boathouse.  There was a museum there, and I also got a pin, but my picture of it was blurred.  This was in the town of St Charles, which is very pretty, and has done itself over as a turn of the century antique shop town.

Then, we headed off and found our old house in Chesterfield, at Baxter Ridge, 3212 Denton Ridge Court, I think is right.  The area is terrifically built up, as they said it would be, but has aged very gracefully. We built there in 1988- absolutely loved that house, it has been our favorite of all the houses we've owned.  It had about 3200 square feet, and a huge master suite/walk in closet.  The downstairs had a big mother in law suite, and then about  a thousand square feet of unfinished space that we were planning to make into a big workshop, but I got promoted after being in the house only 9 months.. drat.. 
Here it is as it looks today:

Then we went back to Camp Wal Mart, unloaded, rested a minute, then ran over to Michaels and Wal Mart for returns and provisions, and now am finishing today's blog. 

Tomorrow, we'll rest up some, then head back downtown to try to have lunch with the Herringtons and then, back to the coach to rest and pack up.  May try to stop in at the O'Fallon baseball stadium to pick up a ball and pin if they are open- They are Frontier League, Independent baseball, and don't start their season until May 10th.

Early Tuesday morning, we'll pick up the anchor and head on over a day early to the metro Kansas City area.  May just head up to St Joseph's to check out the Pony Express area and get those stamps.   Then, we have 4 days reserved to so the Metro Kansas City area.  Lots to do there, National Park wise. 

We are looking into changing the return trip around, just to give Brandon a heads up, we may just head back down to St Louis from Davenport Iowa, hang out here for a couple of days, then run up to Chicago and get you to your plane home... Might mean we miss the Cubs and White Sox, but we'll see the Cardinals if they are in town... more when I see how to change the trip around.