St. Louis

We had a leisurely start to the day at the camp site. Breakfast was coffee and left over ribs (for Jeff).

We drove into St. Louis and toured the national park area of the Arch including the old cathedral. The cathedral was beautiful in its simplicity although it evidently didn't always look that way. There was a guide there to answer questions and he said his father had described the cathedral as looking like a Chinese whore house (the guide had asked his father what he knew about those). The old courthouse was closed for renovations so only could admire it from the outside.

We did the trip to the top of the Arch to see the great views of the area. After, we toured the museum under the Arch. While I question the status of this as a national park (the smallest), it is definitely a worthwhile stop.

Our next stop was the Budweiser facility. We had booked the Beermaster tour. The tour took over 2.5 hours and covered about 2.5 miles. This is an great tour and the facility and its history are very interesting. We had multiple testing opportunities including while it was still being aged and was an unfiltered 8.5% version of Budweiser. We also got to sample from the 2500 gallon finishing tanks and finished off with a visit to a tasting room.

Dinner was pizza at the gallery pub followed by frozen custard at Ted Drew's, which is evidently a local institution.Read more