Road Trip 2008 - Gateway Arch

Our next stop on the way home was a visit to the Gateway Arch and Jefferson National Expansion Memorial National park in St. Louis, MO.


This memorial was amazingly tall! Much bigger than I expected in fact you could see it for miles when we first entered St. Louis from the west. We would have liked to have visited it during the evening but we arrived quite late in St. Louis to begin with.

Getting There & Parking

We found getting there a bit confusing. We ended up over the Mississippi and into a what look like a bad part of Illinois before our GPS corrected us and got us back on another bridge over to St. Louis (the picture above is from the Illinois side). When we had finally arrived, we had a car carrier top on our roof so parking in the garage was out of the question! Parking there cost about $6. We followed signs for the RV parking but that wasn't clearly marked either. We finally found parking in front of the arch.

Visitor Center

The main visitor center is located underground just below the Arch Structure. We arrived at 845AM and it was about 15 degrees outside. The entrance to the arch is located underground. The doors opened at 9AM (so we had to wait outside in the bunker). Security is very tight. Expect to go through metal detectors and have your bags check similar to the airport.

The area includes a large open lobby, huge museum, gift shop, old fashion store (to get coffee), and two movie theaters. This is run by the National Park Service and even have a junior rangers program which the kids were able to go through the museum, answer questions, and earn their Junior Ranger path.

For tickets there are several options. We choose to take a ride to the top and watch the Lewis and Clark movie. There is another movie about the making of the arch.


At the Top

Riding up to the top you take a small tram of 4 to 5 cars. Each car fits about 4 to 5 people and takes a few minutes to get to the top. Our family fit fine in one car. You get some amazing views of St. Louis out of small windows from the top of the arch on one side and some other views of the Mississippi and Illinois from the other side.

Pictures will be here.


Lewis & Clark movie

The Lewis & Clark movie was AMAZING! The 45 minute movie gave an accurate historical account of how President Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis & Clark and crew to explore the land newly aquired from the Louisanna Purchase. It gave an account of new animals including the Prarie Dog and how the Native American woman Sacagawea.