Road Trippin' Day 3

We Left Springfield Missouri bright and early Wednesday morning and continued our trek east.
We stopped at the Saint Louis Missouri temple and marveled at how far the church has come in that area since it's early beginnings.  How wonderful it was to see a temple in an area that was once to hostile towards members of the church. 

Our next stop was the Saint Louis Arch. "The Gateway to the West."  What an amazing monument and testament to the ingenuity of man. We walked thru down town St. Louis and found the courthouse where tickets were being issued to ride à tram to the top of the Arch. The courthouse itself was beautiful! We loved the old architecture of that majestic building and the surrounding ones.

  
It was very hot as we walked around town and there was a lot of construction going on at the park surrounding the Arch. We were so glad when we finally made it inside the underground visitors center. We stood in-line for what seemed like forever until we were finally allowed to board the little 5 seater tram that carried us to the top of the arch. On the ride up we could see the inner workings and makings of the arch thru a little window in the tram. Up and up we went. When the tram finaly stopped, Eliza started to panic! She was sure the car stopped prematurely and that we would be stuck FOREVER! But, after just a moment, the doors opened up and she realized we'd made it to the Top!  We all had a good laugh at that. We looked out of the windows for a bit, but there were so many people crammed into the little space up there that my clostriphobia started kicking in and I had to get out of there. Adam was feeling crowded too so we all headed back down. The kids LOVED getting to go to the top of the arch. I suppose I'm glad I did it too, but I think for me it'll just be once in a lifetime thing.  After we arived back at the bottom, we went in the visitors center theatre and watched a movie about how the Arch was built. 
Afterwards, we walked along the Mississippi River for a bit then we were back on the road.

We drove through Illinois and then got most of the way through Kentucky. We loved how green a beautiful the landscape is in that part of the country.  We took a little detour to see the Louisville Kentucky Temple and settled in at a hotel in Carrollton Kentucky and went right to sleep after our fun day of sight seeing.