This is the final installment of a four-part series. If you’re just joining in, here’s the first,
second, and third installments.
Part 4
The Arch is massive
up close.
While exploring the periphery, I noticed the Hyatt across
from the park.
If you look carefully, each of its towers’ side rooms have
windows that are angled to face the Arch.
The rooms inside must have a slant to them to provide as many rooms as
possible with an unobstructed view of the Arch.
Makes for a great pic right from your hotel room, I guess!
The entire Arch was surrounded by a low, brightly-colored,
plastic construction fence, presumably to keep people away from going
underneath the Arch or because they had some kind of lawn treatment going
on. While I was resting my legs, a Park
Ranger’s patrol car came rolling up, toggling its siren every couple
seconds. The Ranger got out of his car
and pointed to the other side of the Arch.
There were maybe a half dozen high-school aged kids who’d crossed the
barrier on the other side and were strolling carelessly along. The Ranger shouted at them to turn
around. They didn’t. The Ranger climbed over the plastic barrier,
his hand firmly on his hip holster. He
called out again and pointed. They still
didn’t move. Passerby were watching to
see what would happen. After an
inaudible conversation that lasted about a minute, the youths retreated, though
not before we all thought they were
about to get themselves arrested.
More than tired from the walk, I was hungry and
thirsty. Although my hunger had abated
from earlier in the morning, it had returned now that the clop-clop-clop of my
feet wasn’t distracting me. It was about
2:00 PM, and I had to be back at the airport about 4:00 for a 5:30 flight, so
it was about time for some lunch.
Before I left, though, I wanted to see what was beneath the
Arch. I approached what appeared to be a
ticket taker at the entrance to the underground compound and asked him what was
down there. He politely advised me that
there was a souvenir shop and some exhibits; I asked what I assumed would be a
futile question: “Are there any more rides to go to the top?” He kindly repeated a response I’m sure he’d
given all day, and perhaps all year.
“Nothing for the rest of the day.”
Eh, it would have been time consuming and expensive. That’s it.
No big deal. I’m over it. It’s fine.
Off to find some vittles!
Thankfully for me, I already had a place in mind that came
recommended. My father, who’d introduced
me to a number of great restaurants in Louisville and abroad over the years,
had been in St. Louis for a writer’s conference just a couple weeks before I
went, and his suggestion for lunch was a place called Caleco’s, an Italian
sports bar kind of place close to the Arch.
Right at the corner of Broadway and Chestnut, Caleco’s
looked like a local favorite. I went in
and got a seat at the bar; when I’m by my onesie, I don’t mind grabbing a
stool. The bartender, a friendly guy
probably not more than a year or two older than me, took my order. What was I in the mood for? Pizza?
Well, that’s always a winner. I
asked if he had any local pale ales on tap, and he obliged with a list of what
he had on tap, including the favorite local brew, Bud Light. I chuckled and he looked surprised; he told
me most people don’t get that joke, which in turn surprised me. Instead, I got a Schafly Pale Ale, a more
well-known local brew you can actually get in Louisville at many liquor
stores.
Before I knew it, I’d downed half the beer and promptly
asked for a glass of water in addition, realizing that chugging a beer after 15
miles of hard walking pretty much punches my ticket to Sicksville. He had my food up in a jiffy, though, and it
was a fine lookin’ pizza!
I veritably inhaled my pizza, justifying my unhealthy lunch
with the satisfaction of a lengthy, calorie-burning walk. A couple sitting around the corner was
talking with the bartender about the big marathon being held in the city
tomorrow and the 10k in which they were running that afternoon; apparently, the
lady always has a beer before a race, which sounds awful to me, but there you
go.
Overall, I’d give Caleco’s an 8.5
out of 10; not revolutionary, but thoroughly solid with good service. A bit pricey, too. Anxious to get on my way to the airport, I
paid my tab and started out.
I’d had my entire meal, from sit-down to the door, in about
thirty minutes, so I actually had a few minutes to kill before my 3:00 planned
return trip to the airport. I wandered
back the way I came and spotted several other famous St. Louis landmarks,
namely the St. Louis Cardinals’ Busch Stadium.
After a disappointing postseason, Busch Stadium was
uncomfortably quiet. The bartender had
told me that, despite St. Louis’s multiple professional teams, the Cardinals
were the only ones anybody really cared about.
The NFL’s Rams hadn’t done well in a while, and I have no idea about the
Blues’ record in the NHL.
In general, actually, I found the whole downtown area pretty
quiet. It wasn’t teeming with tourists
except at the Arch, and in general, lots of the buildings looked pretty well
rolled up. Admittedly, during a weekday,
I’d say it’s as busy as any other Midwestern city, but today, I was surprised
at the peace, especially given the pleasant fall weather. Perhaps the national coverage of riots and
demonstrations in defense of Michael Brown have shooed away the fearful. Between you and me, I kind of wanted to see
one myself. This kind of thing is
history in the making, both locally and nationally.
Although I’d actually planned to take the MetroLink at the 8th
and Pine station, closer to Caleco’s, there was actually a station right here
at the stadium, aptly named “Stadium.”
While certainly not as complex or interesting as a light rail station in
New York or Hong Kong, it was nice to see how low-profile it could be, much
like the Rock Road station I’d encountered that morning.
I was getting my ticket at the automated machine before
descending to the train level. A man
approached me and kindly asked if this train leads to the airport. I told him that it did, and he seemed
grateful. We got our tickets and
wandered down to wait for the train. We
struck up a conversation; his name was Vince, and he gave away his nationality
not with his words or physical traits, but through the clothes he wore. He was wearing a bright red Spanish football
club warm-up suit. I asked if he was
from Spain, and he confirmed that he was.
As the train came rushing to the platform, we considered whether this
was the correct train for us, decided it was, and hopped on. Although signs abounded saying a conductor
would come by to check our tickets, no one ever did.
As the train lurched back into motion, he told me that he
was in town for the marathon as well, and that he’d had a good run that morning
in one of the shorter side events. I
joked with him, saying I was about to brag about my 15-mile walk to him, now
realizing that it looks pretty juvenile compared to a 26-mile run.
He was a Spanish teacher who’d taught his native language in Iowa for
the last several years.
Suddenly, I realized we’d gotten on the right train, but it
was terminating at the wrong place. I
gestured to him for us to stand up and exit, and we did so just in time. We sat at the platform and continued our
conversation; he expressed his displeasure with the way soccer/football players
are compensated, saying that giving so much money to these young men was
foolish. I agreed, citing the exorbitant
salaries of MLB players as an analogous American problem. I brought up the legendary home run race from
my youth, where St. Louis local Mark McGwire and Chicago Cub Sammy Sosa dueled
for the fate of the home run record, made some forty years earlier by Roger
Marris; as baseball isn’t much of a sport outside of the US and places like
Japan, this whole event was news to him.
Eventually, the right train rolled into the station and we hopped on,
bound for the airport.
We rolled along in the new stock, stopping every couple
minutes to admit and discharge passengers.
After a couple of stops, we passed Rock Road, where I’d been just hours
earlier, trudging along on my journey, unaware of the things I’d encounter
between then and now. After passing the
local university stops, Vince disembarked.
We shook hands, and I wished him the best of luck in the marathon the
next day.
I relaxed my eyes and let myself by swayed by the train’s course. The airport was a long-distance stretch from
the next-to-last stop. We finally came
to a halt at the final location, and I gathered my backpack and
headphones. The gentleman behind me was
fast asleep. I’m not sure where he
intended to get off at the final stop or if he was just riding it for a couple
hours, but I stirred him awake in case he wanted to get off.
An enclosed escalator took me down to the lobby level of the
airport, where I emerged in a neat little terminal.
The swooping ceiling was unique; it swung low, making me
feel like I was in a painted cavern more than an airport terminal. I wandered over to the small Cape Air counter
and checked in. Maybe my weight will
have changed? Eh, wishful thinking.
Now officially checked in and ticket in hand, I set out to
explore a bit. KSTL has three main
concourses, divided fairly firmly by airline.
However, each of the three terminals has its own security
checkpoint. The terminals were
segregated enough that, once you’d gone through security in one, you were
firmly confined to one terminal. As
you’ll come to learn, this is very unfortunate for me, as I love to wander
through the whole airport while
waiting for my own flight, not just in my own concourse. Although I considered going through each
security checkpoint separately to explore the airport (I had time), the TSA
agents turned someone in front of me away for reporting to the wrong
checkpoint. Thus, I was consigned to the
same concourse at which I’d arrived eight hours earlier.
I sailed through security without a problem around 4:15 and,
as I do in any terminal, I started my exploratory walk.
Concourse C was a healthy walk, perhaps a quarter mile from
one side to the other. On a Saturday
afternoon, it seemed fairly tranquil, with a few flights headed out and
coming. Several touristy shops lined the
corridor, along with some food outlets and vending machines. Just like about any other airport, really. The concourse wasn’t terribly distinct, as
this photo might indicate. However, it
does have one intriguing bit of recent history to its name.
Back in May of 2011, if you’ll remember, Missouri was
ravaged by several tornadoes over the course of just a few days. KSTL happened to be directly in the path of a
severe, EF4 tornado. That’s the kind of
tornado that picks up Dorothy’s house, y’all.
As the twister tore across the runways and terminals, glass shattered
and planes got pushed around like toys.
Structurally, the airport remained pretty intact and it has since been
restored. So, although not particularly
glamorous, this place is sturdy.
I put on my headphones and lapped the concourse several
times. There goes a flight to Dallas,
there goes another one to Seattle, and here comes one from O’Hare. I even racked up my pedometer to a healthy
40,000 steps.
The farthest end of the concourse had been closed from
disuse; even in this well-funded and highly-visible area of St. Louis, there
was still decay.
Deep in the back of the closed section, this former Great
American Cookie was being gutted. The
lights were on; someone had been working on it.
Despite the normally polished interior of the airport, this section had
the whole “flickering lights, dimmed overhead lamps, boarded-up doors” thing
going on. It felt like a rundown mall
more than an airport concourse.
Casually, I wandered back to the more populated section of Concourse C,
grabbed a snack and a soda from one of the casual cafes, which lowered its
metal gate behind me as soon as I left, and resigned myself to a seat at
C7. I caught myself watching an episode
of Anthony Bourdain’s show where he visited Paraguay. It was difficult to follow, though, as the
closed captioning I was relying on seemed to be about thirty seconds behind the
action on-screen. The attendant called
for our flight number, 1261, and I was ready to go. I lined up, but there wasn’t anyone in front
or behind me. I wasn’t on this plane
alone, was I? Oh, wait, there she comes.
A single other passenger and I boarded the same elevator
from this morning and descended to the tarmac.
She wasn’t on the flight this morning, so I didn’t recognize her. Her name was Nikki, and she was on her way to
Owensboro visiting family from out west.
She was about my age, a little younger, perhaps, but this is the first
time she’d been on a plane this little, and she was shocked.
In we went, and the same captain who flew us in this morning
was at the helm again, though this time without his co-pilot. While commercial flights are required to have
at least two pilots aboard, there must be an exception when you’re flying just
two people. Maybe “three passengers or
less” was the cutoff. Our captain gave
us the same safety spiel, and I snagged a spot right behind the copilot’s seat.
I had half a mind to ask to sit in the
co-pilot’s seat, but I chickened out.
Either way, I got a great view of all the controls and what the pilot
was doing, which made the aviation geek in me happy. He taxied us out just as quick as we rolled
in this morning, and he had us on Runway 30L, ready to take off where we’d
landed that morning.
A pretty sunset was on deck for our in-flight
entertainment. I watched the pilot’s
hands flurry over the knobs and dials, getting us set up for our flight.
Slowly the sun set behind us, and the three of us soared
into twilight. Our return flight time
was slated to be shorter, around an hour flat, so it wasn’t long before we were
descending back through the clouds.
I watched as we got closer and closer to Owensboro on his
GPS and we were still going nearly full speed.
He made a hard left turn, lined us up facing north, and deployed the
flaps and landing gear in one motion, bringing us in for a smooth approach.
He taxied us up to the unlit terminal in Owensboro, and we
disembarked. The same lady who gave me
my ticket this morning was there to greet me, and she ran into unlock
everything and turn on some lights for us.
Through the “jetway” we walked, and we emerged in the terminal, equally
as empty as when I’d gotten there thirteen hours earlier.
I bid Nikki a fun visit with her family and made my way to my
car. In the front seat, I found my
directions which I’d indeed left there that morning. A turn of the key and I was on my way home,
where I safely arrived about 100 minutes later.
---
What a fun, cheap, and enlightening trip! The day was full of surprises, on-the-fly
changes, and fulfilling experiences, just like any trip should be.
This trip was one of the cheapest I’ve ever done, and
certainly the cheapest that included a flight.
Here’s a breakdown of my total travel-related expenses.
Flight
|
$104.00
|
Lunch
|
$25.00
|
Airport Snack
|
$8.50
|
Gas Money
|
$25.00
|
MetroLink
|
$2.50
|
Total
|
$165.00
|
That’s $165.00 for a full day of fun, some great pictures, and a month of posts!
What’s your favorite place to go in St. Louis? If you had just one day, what would you
choose to do? Where would you eat, and
how would you get there?
In February, I'll be doing a walk I've been planning for months, and I'm excited for you to go along with me!
Until next time, keep going!
- Matt
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