(FRIDAY – MAY 15) — As you know, we are about to embark on a 4,000+ mile journey across some of America’s most spectacular highways. We plan to do a lot while we’re out West; see a lot of things that defy description and are found nowhere else in the world.
So this past weekend, we decided to do a trial-run of our road trip. Well, okay, that’s just a more handy way of describing a long-planned trip to St. Louis to tour the city with our Baltimore friends, and former St. Louisianians (how DO you describe people from St. Louis?), Schoene & Rumi. The road trip down to the Show Me State ended with Marc and I sliding down a seven story slide into a cave surrounded by whales.
But more on that later. I picked up Marc from work after dropping off our dog at the kennel and headed out on Rt. 55 which follows the old famed Route 66. While I wish I could say the scenery was incredible, really central and southern Illinois is essentially flat farmland. It’s supposed to be some of the most arable land in the USA, or at least that’s what they say in the commercials that promote Illinois farming.
As you drive, you see something that is now apparently commonplace in the Great Plains, farmhouses after farmhouses, shuddered and overgrown – each a house with history and a family tree to claim its own, but now a part of the larger farms of today.
I bought a book before we left: Let’s Go Road Tripping USA: The complete coast-to-coast guide to America. I highly recommend it. The book is a great guide to some of the bigger routes across the country and does a great job describing many of the small towns and their attractions along the way. When we looked up Pontiac, Illinois, we read that the town has a “popular” saying: “Pontiac has three swinging bridges and we’re a swinging town.” We’re pretty sure that no one in the town actually says that, but thought it was pretty funny anyway.
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- Marc in the flooded park in Pontiac, Illinois
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- The Swinging Bridge Swung
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- James in a rotating beer barrel at the City Museum in St. Louis.
We did indeed find one of the swinging bridges, right next to the county jail. The river below the bridge was flooded and appeared to have tried to take claim to some of the surrounding parkland. All in all the bridge itself did swing, but our general review of the town was that it was very quaint, but not exactly swinging.
And so we wanted to follow the Old Route 66 for a few miles, at which point we discovered that there are actually several Rt. 66s (annnnd anyone know the plural of Rt. 66?); depending on which year. We discovered this because we saw a sign for the 1926-1930 alignment only to be confused by a second sign from later years that had us head back into town. We decided to get back on the Interstate before it got too late for us to see St. Louis.
Schoene & Rumi gave us a punch list of places we should go that night: Schlafly’s Tap, Blueberry Café, and the City Museum. We had also gone on to Yelp to discover the best rated barbeque in town was Pappy’s Barbeque. After we found out Pappy’s was closed for a private event, we found Smokie O’s – a hole in the wall restaurant in the middle of a very, very industrial part of town. The kind of part of town where you feel like it could be the set of an opening scene of Law & Order. Or possibly the part of town where the St. Louis mob might take care of its business away from unwelcome eyes.
We weren’t able to hit up Blueberry, but headed over to the City Museum around 9:30. Mind you, we had no idea what to expect about the City Museum – just that it was “artsy” and that we would really enjoy it. We paid the $10 admission and weren’t told much by the cashier. We expected to see a museum with a lot of art and history lessons about the settlement of the city.
Dioramas were definitely in store, we feared. You know, the kind where they show a fur trapper drowning a beaver or something.
Then we noticed the kids. All the kids. A lot of kids. Most of them, gasp, teenagers.
Something didn’t seem quite right. There was a lot of noise, did I mention a lot of kids?, and a lot of… energy. All for a museum about the history of St. Louis. It just seemed odd and without even walking in to the museum, we were overwhelmed.
Why would teenagers be so interested in their city’s history?
“Is there a brochure or a guide or something?” I asked the cashier.
I was later grateful she didn’t laugh at me. She mentioned that one of her favorite things is the caves.
“The caves?” I thought.
And the slide. The seven story slide.
We nodded to give her the feeling like we listened and understood, what she said. We walked away, shrugged our shoulders at each other, and nearly simultaneously asked each other – did she say there’s a slide?
Yes. And it’s seven stories. No joke. But to find it, you have to go through a cave. Yes, a cave. But before you can get into the cave, you have to find the right entrance which happens to be behind the 20 foot mouth of a whale. You don’t just walk through the caves either; you climb through them. In no time, you’ll find yourself on your hands & knees trying to find the route back toward the slide.
According to Wikipedia, because thousands of Americans with nothing to do and full editing capability can’t be wrong, local artist Bob Cassidly bought the building and started to turn it into the playground all of us wish we had as a kid, but could never imagine nevermind build. He used recovered industrial materials to turn every inch of the space into something that could be touched, slid down, jumped on, hung from, or climbed through.
Make no mistake about it, if you have any phobia – people, enclosed spaces, dirt, darkness, or heights – then this is either the place to cure you of your fears or give yourself nightmares.
But for us, as we found ourselves climbing the seven stories of the metallic spiral staircase, we both said over and over again that this had to be the coolest place on earth. The kind of place that no matter how old you are, you can feel like a kid again. Only this time with less acne.
