"We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." T. S. Eliot
This only serves to increase my lust for Missouri state park superiority. Long story short it you camp five nights at state parks in a year you can send in proof and get an amazing prize. Challenge accepted.
Still drinking down the beers I borrowed from Anheuser-Busch. They sure are generous.
A big perk of living downtown is that we can walk to the arch whenever we wish.
Prior to 2018 this place had the awful name of Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. When it became a national park, somehow without me noticing, in 2018 it got the more sensical name of Gateway Arch National Park.
I got a new St. Louisy phone wallpaper that I'm digging.
We started off our day attending the 2020 STL Women's March. One nice thing about living downtown is that all of the political marches happen there so it's really convenient to walk over and raise a ruckus.
Some shots of me marching like a real American hero made it onto the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's website.
After the march we popped into the Old Courthouse across the street. It is part of the Gateway Arch National Park and has a lot of good history. When it was completed in 1864 it was the tallest building in Missouri. Slave auctions took place here as well as the Dred Scott case, where Scott sued for his freedom because he had been transported from Missouri to Illinois, which was a free state. Scott lost here and lost again in the US Supreme Court, which ruled that the Constitution didn't grant citizenship to black people regardless of whether they were enslaved or free. The ruling went on to also strike down the entire Missouri Compromise.
Another bit of history that I thought was interesting was that the land that the courthouse sits on was donated under the terms that it was to be "used forever as the site on which the courthouse of the County of St. Louis should be erected." Well when the city left the county the courthouse ceased to be located in the county. So the descendants of the donors sued to have the land returned to them.
There was some very archy Fitz's root beer in the gift shop.
Lydia was real scared of looking over the railing on the upper floors.
All of that history made us thirsty so we went on a beer sipping war path starting with Bailey's Range.
Played a little Oregon Trail card game at 2nd Shift.
Later in the night we headed to Ballpark Village to watch a sneak peek of Birds of a Different Game, a documentary about the 1980s St. Louis Cardinals.
Afterwards there was a live event thing "hosted by MLB Network's Fran Charles" that featured "a Q&A with Hall of Famers Whitey Herzog and Ozzie Smith and 80's fan favorites Tommy Herr and John Tudor".
The mechanical bull at PBR had seen better days. Sad.
We had some dinner at Drunken Fish and then went home. Busy night!
