Trip to St Louis Gateway arch

I was not so much excited to go for this Saint Louis trip, and not even sarvesh was educated well before going for the trip to view Saint Louis Gateway arch, Missouri and Meramec caverns. I definitely don’t have an idea of what we are going to see and I don’t have time to educate Sarvesh on what we are going to see in this trip. He was so eager to know about the place that we planned to go. Previously we have a plan to go for some water theme park, so that sarvesh will enjoy the trip, but for some reasons we dropped the plan and went to St. Louis to see the monument of arch.

First day we went to a grant farm, there we saw some farm animals and we missed elephant shows and parrot shows. Sarvesh enjoyed feeding milk to goats using feeding bottle. When he tries to give the milk for one goat, so many goats grabbed the bottle from him, and then he scared so much and dropped the feeding bottle down. But he enjoyed it. He was so happy, playing, roaming and talking with his friends about the animals. He saw some common animals that he saw when he was in India – cows, goats, buffalo, hen and much more. Before going to the grants farm, we went some of the zoos in Chicago, he saw so many animals but he worried so much that he didn’t even his favorite elephant in the zoos. But this time, he was so happy to see the African elephant in Grant’s Farm, that was so un expected for me. Overall Sarvesh enjoyed watching the animals in the Farm with his friends. Then we planned to go for the Gateway arch in Saint Louis for the rest of the day. 

I am not so much happy that we are going to see a beautiful arch. For me its just a building, whats there in it, not so excited, its just made out of bricks and stones. After we reached there, I’m so surprised, its so tall – 630 feet and 192 m, we all were trying to take photographs along with the kids standing near the arch. But its very difficult to cover the whole arch with the kids in the photo. Anyhow, I managed to take some photos of my son and husband. When we enter into the arch, sarvesh started asking a “n” number of questions, are we going inside the arch, and how we will reach the top of the arch. Even I donno what to answer, now I m so much eager to know how we will reach the top of the arch. When we enter in the arch (below the arch), there was a museum, which has some historic things, and there were some postings of happenings from the year 1820 till 1845. I was so much interested to read, but it will take one day for me to read the whole history. There was a cart, which can be pulled up by humans in the museum. Sarvesh showed so much interest to pull the cart, so the museum person allowed the kids to pull the cart from one place to another inside the museum. Sarvesh and his friends enjoyed pulling the cart and he asked to sign the book. Sarvesh wrote his name in the book.

Then we took the ticket to go to the top of the arch, we took south tram, I have no idea of what a tram  and how we will reach the observation deck of the arch. Before entering into the tram, they provided yellow cards for each of us, in that card, some number was mentioned, for us it s “6”, and I thought it would be like a lift and for each lift we have to wait and go. They played a movie on the gateway arch and EADs bridge which was build on 1867 that connects the St Louis and Illinois. The movie s casted for 15 minutes, it showed some historic happenings why the EADs bridge was built and they experimented the  bridge safety using an elephant, it seems that the elephant cannot step on any unsafe surface. 

Finally they showed why Gateway arch is built, it is the part of Jefferson National expansion memorial of st. Louis. In 1947, there was a national wide competition to design a monument in Saint Louis. It was Eero who won the contest with his gateway arch design, that’s how it started implemented in the year 1963 and completed in 1967. There was some mathematical calculations provided by Eero to prove the design. Sarvesh showed so much interest to see the movie about Gateway arch but I have no hope what he understands from the movie, and he was asking so many questions on arch to his daddy.

Then we went inside the tram which is numbered “6”, it’s a six seated, looks like a box or a lift, we sitted in each seat and enjoyed the travel from bottom to top, Sarvesh watched the steps and shouted, “mummy steps are there, can we go via steps” its very nice to travel in tram. And we reached the observation deck and viewed the city St.Louis , it looks so amazing in the night lights, I enjoyed viewing the river from top and sarvesh was so excited to view the buildings with lightings and he watched some police vehicles with blue and red lightings on the top of it from the observation deck and called us to watch it. It was so amazing for me that how he founded the police car from top. It is 630 feet high and 192 m. while we wait for the tram to get down, I felt some shaking in the arch, and even everyone felted the same, its all because of the air, its shaking and I enjoyed along with Sarvesh. There were some stunt happenings in the arch in 1980s and 1990s. when we get down from the top, I asked Sarvesh how it is, he told me that “we didn’t go to the top of the arch, you just made me fool, we went into some lift, no where I see the gray buidlings, its all black marbles inside.” Arch was gray outside and black inside, I told Sarvesh we went inside the arch , but not even listen to my words. I hope one day when he reads this blog, and he will understand where he went and what he enjoyed, that day is not so long.  In my next blog, I will post some happenings in meremac caverns, that I enjoyed with Sarvesh.