Day 06 — driving from Louisville to St Louis, MO

After driving through Europe last summer, this trip through the US illustrates just how vast our country is.  Today is the first day we’ve spent several hours in the car all at once.  The land between Louisville, KY and St Louis, MO is largely uninhabited, or at least it feels that way.  I’ve been sitting in the car, watching the endless landscape go by and listening to Classic Vinyl on the satellite radio.  I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the American road trip tradition.  There is a sense of freedom in having the open road both in front of and behind you, but it’s also tinged with a bit of loneliness.  There is a lot of space here still.

We stopped in a little town called New Harmony.  It’s a Utopia founded in 1814 by a religious fanatic, who named it Harmonie.  After a few years, God told him to move everyone back to Pennsylvania where they’d originally come from, so they sold the entire town to a guy named Robert Owen.  He wanted to create a self-sufficient community based on the secular ideals of equality for all citizens (including women) and rigorous education, particularly in the sciences.  He renamed it New Harmony.  His eventual descendants were key players in creating the Smithsonian Museum and establishing the idea of public libraries. What is notable about New Harmony now is that most of the original buildings have been preserved.

Wall in the visitor’s center. Many of the entries were “weed” and “bacon” … which probably is a pretty good summary of why the Utopia ultimately failed as an intellectual endeavor. People are dumb.

The family working through a labyrinth. This lead to a long and heated discussion about the differences between mazes and labyrinths.

New Harmony has blocks of preserved buildings dating from 1775 up until 1900.

My friend Randy likes to say that every town has a Dead Pecker Corner; a place where local old men gather to sit, drink coffee, and not talk to each other.  In a cafe around the corner from our hotel in Iceland a few years ago, we found the best example of a Dead Pecker Corner we’ve ever come across; a table near the front window where a rotating crop of old guys would park themselves and stay all day long … that is, the best example we’ve seen until today.

New Harmony is an entire Dead Pecker Town.  We stopped in a little cafe (one of the only places open) and were greeted by a group of seniors sitting at the center table.  In keeping with their long tradition of women’s equality, this Dead Pecker table was 50% female.  That created a much more talkative group than you usually see, although ALL of the talking was being done by the guys.  I guess a group of all dudes doesn’t have much to say, but throw a couple of ladies in the mix and suddenly the gregarious one-ups-manship instinct kicks in.

Anyway, they glommed onto Adam as soon as we walked in the door and sucked him into a long conversation about cameras, St. Louis, Oklahoma City, travel in general, and wanted to know where he was from, where he was going, and where he’d already been.  They were chock full of advice and expertise on every subject.  The ladies all nodded and said, “Yup” every so often.  One lady gestured to the most talkative guy at the table and announced with pride, “This here is the richest man in town.”  He would have thumbed his suspenders if he’d been wearing any, and said “Aw, shucks.  But yep, I guess that’s so.”

Walking around New Harmony made me feel like I’d stepped into a Stephen King novel.  The town immediately prior to it had so many graveyards they probably boast a much larger population of dead citizens than alive ones.  That was a little creepy.  Then comes New Harmony, a town exclusively populated by old people living in an idyllic setting.  Just how old were they?  Is there some kind of Cocoon-like swimming pool that keeps them all alive?  What if they are the original settlers from back in 1824?  Or maybe they are aliens, here on Earth living in their idea of what a human utopia would look like so they could “fit in” and study us.  Maybe that’s what the 3rd degree Adam got in the coffee shop was all about.  This place is a gold mine of ideas for creepy fictional stories.  It’s just a little too perfect, with a population just a little too old and a little too friendly.

Next up was lunch at Applebees, where I noticed the guy sitting behind Adam was wearing an enormous gun on his hip in a quick-release holster. I became a little obsessed with him.  What was his deal?  He looked like he could possibly be an off-duty cop or retired military and we were all safer in his heroic presence… OR …  he could be a paranoid conspiracy theorist with an itchy trigger finger.  Who hears, “Hey, wanna go to Applebees?” and replies, “Yeah!  Just lemme grab my gun.”

We finally made it to St. Louis mid-afternoon and headed downtown to the Gateway Arch.  We bought tickets for the Captain’s Special, which gets you an hour-long ride on a paddle boat on the Mississippi River, and a ride to the top of the Gateway Arch.

The paddle boat ride was somewhat ruined by the first (probably of many) embarrassing family arguments.  Isabella and Holden got into a squabble jockeying for space at the railing before the boat even left the dock.  In typical Isabella fashion, instead of just backing off when I intervened, she decided to take me on.  If she’s in for a penny, she’s in for a pound.  I eventually had to tag out and send Adam in because I was getting too mad (and so was she.)  So, most of that hour saw Isabella sitting in a folding chair with her arms crossed in a huff on one side of the snack bar, and me sitting in a folding chair with my arms crossed in a huff on the other side of the snack bar.  Holden happily took the coveted railing spot and luxuriated in his good fortune.  Luckily, by the time we docked everyone had cooled off and returned to civilized behavior.

Neighboring boat “Becky Thatcher.” Our identical vessel was “Tom Sawyer.”

Enjoying the railing view. It was really hot this afternoon and the breeze felt great.

New bridge construction on the Mississippi.

Going up into the Arch was a freaky experience.  We were wondering how they made the elevators curve to accommodate the arch, and the answer is:  they don’t.  Instead of an elevator, you get into a claustrophobic pod that looks almost exactly like the egg Dr. Evil uses to escape Austin Powers.  They seat five people each, and it’s a tight squeeze.  They appear to work the same way a Ferris wheel does, except that you’re trapped in a tiny spaceship-like death trap with four other freaked out human beings.  The ride up lasts 4 minutes, which is a really long time when you’re trying not to have a panic attack.

The top of the arch is also claustrophobic.  The ceiling is only about 7 feet high, and it’s surprisingly narrow up there.  The viewing windows are set into the side of the arch angled down at the ground, so when you look out the window it looks like you’re hanging out over the side of a cliff.  It’s very unsettling.  Also unsettling is that the arch sways in the wind.

I was desperate to get out of there.  Granted, I don’t have a good track record for going up in famous monuments.  I didn’t have much nice to say about my Eiffel Tower experience, either.  But if you are at all claustrophobic, or don’t like feeling trapped way up high, then maybe going to the top of Gateway Arch is not for you.  I was thankful the Dr. Evil pod ride down was only 3 minutes.  I guess gravity helps shave a whole minute off the descent.

Top of the Gateway Arch, inside. Note the low ceiling and narrow width.

Holden checking out the views from the top of the Arch.

View of downtown St. Louis. Busch stadium on the left. The old Capital building on the right.

Now we’re back at the hotel preparing for tomorrow.  We have to be in Oklahoma City for Adam to attend meetings on Friday morning, so tomorrow is going to be an “iron butt” day in the car.  The GPS says it’s a 7.5 hour ride, which means it will take us closer to 9.