Day 3: Alton IL - Marshall MO

I feel like DETH and really don't want to do anything except go to sleep.  Even though there's pizza within 200 yards.

Six hours of fever dreams later...  OK, where were we?  Answer: in the rain in Alton.  The Beeb's "thundery showers" turned out to be nothing of the sort but rather downpours of the torrential variety which continued with variations in intensity until mid-afternoon.  First port of call: the Gateway Arch in St Louis.

A The Gateway Arch, yesterday

Designed by Eero Saarinenen, built in the mid-1960s and intended to commemorate USAnia's westward expansion, which is all very laudable unless you happened to live there already.  You can exchange Money for a ticket to travel to the top, 630 feet up, where on a clear day you can see for miles. And miles and miles and miles and ["Shut up, Daltrey!" - Ed.]  Today you couldn't, and they really need windscreen wipers on the slit-like windows coz I couldn't see much at all chiz.

Crap view of some of the bridges across the Mighty Mississippi

Old Court House across the road from the Arch, currently closed for renovation

Next stop St Charles, where there is a Lewis & Clark Museum & Boathouse.  The latter contains replicas of the divers boats used by the intrepid explorers but they were safely locked up in their cage today which precluded photography.

Boat House & Museum

Seaman.  Didn't even have a coin slot in his head chiz.

The museum has a replica of Seaman, Lewis' Newfoundland doggo, outside pleading with big puppy eyes to spend five bucks, see Stuffs and watch a slick video, with Jeff Bridges voiceover! - reconstructing some of the highlights of the expedition, such as avoiding rucks with the locals, nearly starving utterly to DETH crossing the mountains in Montana and Idaho and the sort of coincidence that Hollywood would have dismissed as too improbable, viz. teenage Shoshone woman and interpreter Sacagawea¹ running into a party not only from her own tribe but actually led by her brother just when the Expedition needed to blag horses for the crossing of the mountains.

Now you'll remember, iffen you've seen the fillum "The Blues Brothers", the song "She Caught The Katy".  This is the Katy today:

The mule she left me to ride wasn't around today...

A 237-mile rails-to-trails project stretching most of the way across Missouri using the route of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad - later shortened to "the KT".  Y'all can die happy knowing that.

Next stop Hermann which, as the name might suggest, was founded by German settlers in 1837 and is home to a thriving viniculture, a shop selling a gazillion varieties of sausage (natch) and some cool buses.

Bus. Hermann. Saturday.

Thence to Jefferson City, state capital of Missouri.  There's supposed to be some L&C-related Stuffs around the Capitol building, which is a jolly impressive pile, but I couldn't find them and by now was feeling disinclined to spend much time looking for them.

Missouri State Capitol, Jefferson City

I was supposed to visit Boonville and Arrow Rock too, but they can wait until tomorrow today.  Hopefully normal Mr Larrington will have resumed by then, coz I don't fancy stopping another night here when there are Sights to be Seen.

1. Spelling of her name varies but this seems to be the most common so I'll stick with it.