“Go where your friends are. It’s like having home everywhere on Earth.” – Old Sean
A Stone Beyond Rest
St. Louis was, for all intents and purposes, my very last visit on my trip.
I trundled towards St. Louis, where I was to meet my friend from high school Tom and my friend from college, Jake. However, I had considerable time to loiter before arriving.
Heavy with a Hank-breakfast from Mattoon, I first stopped at the Cotton Belt Freight Depot. This is an extremely run down building but the outside facing the river has an amazing, vibrant mural. This side of St. Louis, however, is it’s darkest. It’s littered in broken windows, stuffed with folks wandering haphazardly and plywood boards up a wide number of buildings.
The old factory district of St. Louis is a long-time struggling portion of the city. The buildings themselves are failed goliaths of red brick with graffiti windmills posted along the river. As with the rest of the United States post-COVID emergence, the number of tent cities and homeless folks has horridly increased since my last visit.
The Sculpted Beauties
I next stopped by Sculpture Park near the capitol building, which has long been a guilty pleasure of mine when visiting the city. Many old sculptures were available, but Kaldi’s Coffee was unfortunately shut down, preventing me from getting my second morning fix.
I turned towards the much more posh side of St. Louis, the portion of town that has fountains, groves of curbside trees and tiny, finely crafted houses. It was over here I grabbed a coffee from a Starbucks while delving into the World Chess Hall of Fame. There’s a giant chess set outside that makes the building hard to miss and an enormous two story wooden king above that, in case someone’s glasses prescription hadn’t arrived yet.
Fairly delighted by my little museum entrance, I bought a travel chess set for a friend and wandered off to the most highly recommended location in St. Louis.
The City Museum
When I was in university, everyone constantly recommended City Museum, but I never found the chance to attend. I probably should have, because it is a daunting assault on the senses.
City Museum is an interactive crawling, climbing, clambering, sliding, slithering, hopping and more climbing jungle gym of several confusingly staggered stories. That alone would likely be enough, but all of these features are decorated with a rediculous assortment of strange artworks.
There are live aquariums with painted lobsters and giant squids. There are school busses tilting off of rooftops and full jets with gutted insides that can be crawled through. Golf carts without wheels double as picnic benches and entire wings of the museum cater to turn-of-the-century terra-cotta facades on building surfaces.
Sculptures emerge from the ground, pillars of neon colors spin when touched and an entire arcade is hidden inside a pink-lit room. Mirrors in geometric shapes in hallways give a visual representation of heart palpitations with vertigo. There are also layers and layers of deep underground caverns with esoteric sculptures worked into the walls.
Getting around City Museum is inherently confusing, with most of the alternative transitionary routes designed for small children. However, fit and not-claustrophobic adults like myself can wedge themselves through.
Travel Munchies
Once my brain had been successfully wrung of all stimulus, I went next to Clementine’s Naughty and Nice Creamery, which was recommended by a friend.
I probably should’ve had the friend clarify, since most of their best, sexually-named flavors were alcoholic, but I enjoyed myself nonetheless. I grabbed a great sandwich and coffee from Sister’s Sandwich Shoppe, picking the vegetarian option so I could pretend to be healthy for the rest of my meal.
I had another hour to kill before my friend Tom was off of work, so I wandered over to the Botanical Gardens for a walk around. Beautiful as always with walkways of blossoming flowers, tall water features and mazes of greenery, I was also treated to a new addition, metal origami. The new sculpture theme was scattered throughout the park, often incorperated into the plant life.
Friendlies in the Building
Finally, I met up with Tom for a few hours and we wandered around, eventually stopping for potatoes snacks at Vinnie’s Italian Beef and Gyros. It’s exactly as heavy as it sounds. My final stop in the city was in a very cool section of town, Layla (Gourmet Burger and Shawarma) in The Grove.
I met Jake here, along with his girlfriend. We caught up and talked about DnD for a while before I finally hopped on the road, one last time to Dallas.
I’ve driven this route more times than I can count, returning from university, so every twist, turn and building was familiar. I’ve probably put more miles on my life driving this route than any other.
I’ll be home in the morning. Rain is inbound, so it’ll be a night of driving through the night.
Until the next trip,
Best regards and excellent trails,
Old Sean
Written May 20th 2021
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The GoPro Hero Black is my go to Action camera. I’m not comfortable bringing my cell phone to many wet and rugged locations, so the GoPro does most of my photographic heavy-lifting. The only things I bring in my GoPro kit are the camera, a spare battery and the forehead mount. I upgrade my GoPro once every two years. It was particularly excellent to have during my aquatic tour of Belize.
