Nauvoo Trip - Day 1

We left on a Thursday evening and arrived in St. Louis after midnight.  We stayed at a hotel near the airport that night, slept in as late as we could, then the kids and I watched a 1960's documentary about the building of the Gateway Arch while Ben took some work calls.  Then we headed down to the Arch and met up with John and his family!  Yeah!  We all parked at the Cardinals Stadium garage and walked to the Arch.  We only had a little time to walk through the underground museum - we'll have to spend more time there on our next visit.  Then we got into our tiny little tram and rode to the top!

The museum had a lot of information about Native Americans.
Some of it was very sobering.

The museum also had exhibits about pioneers, Westward expansion,
and life on the frontier in the early 1800's.

Waiting for our tram ride.

This picture does not accurately depict the coziness of the tram.
Our knees got very friendly on the 4-minute ride up and the 3-minute ride down.

Top of the arch!  630 feet high.

Looking over the Mississippi River from the small windows facing east.

Facing west.  In the center is the Old Courthoues, where Dred and Harriet Scott
sued for their freedom from slavery (1846) and Virginia Minor
sued for her right to vote (1873).  To the left is Cardinals Stadium.

We took some time for pictures outside...

...then we headed to a fun local restaurant called Fitz's which is known for its sodas and oversized floats.  The food was good too!  We were looking forward to seeing the bottling portion of the business but it was undergoing renovation when we were there.

This is our float.
Ben was nervous he might drop it while I was taking this picture.

After our late lunch we drove 3 hours to Nauvoo, made a quick stop at our AirBNB, then headed down to see the British Pageant.  It was a great show!  It centers around early missionaries in the British Isles and their converts, then - spoiler alert - ends with the converts going to Nauvoo.  The music and choreography were impressive for the number of (high-turnover!) volunteers in the cast, but my favorite aspect was the stories.  The characters were sweet, funny, relatable, and full of faith.

(That's the actual temple in the background.)