Gateway Arch

The past weekend my attractive wife came to visit me! She flew out from California on Friday, 18 July and I met her at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in the St. Louis suburb of Clayton. Over my regularly scheduled leave last May, we spent one kid-free weekend at the San Francisco Ritz Carlton and really enjoyed it. All told, we had just under 48 hours together. It’s very unusual to get to see your family more than once on a deployment such as mine and I was especially thankful to see and spend time with her.

On Saturday, I cajoled my wife into going downtown to see the famous St. Louis Gateway Arch. My wife told me that some of the steel used in the construction of the arch came from a mill owned by her grandfather in Pittsburgh. She said the steel was floated down the Ohio River on its eventual way to St. Louis by rail. We took the convenient St. Louis MetroRail link from Clayton to downtown and walked a short distance to the arch. It is simply magnificent. We bought tickets for the internal tram that takes people to the top of the arch where there is a viewing lounge.

The tram reservation was for roughly and hour and a half so we strolled the old river front neighborhood complete with cobblestone streets. We ended up at the Four Seasons Hotel with an adjacent modern casino. We grabbed a surprisingly good sushi lunch inside and then walked back to the arch.

Aside from the crush of people (it was, after all, summer and a Saturday), the trip up was very cool. The tram is a combination elevator and and rail car that slowly climbs to the apex of the 600 foot arch. Climbing one set of stairs take you to the viewing lounge which is not very big. It wasn’t for the claustrophobic. The view was amazing.

Edited to Add: After reading this post, my father-in-law emailed to add that my attractive wife's grandfather didn't actually own the mill. He went on to explain, "He was a machinist who rose through the ranks to the position of Superintendent of the Heavy Assembly Shop at Pittsburgh-Des Moines Steel Company near Pittsburgh. They fabricated the steel sections [for the Arch] and I can remember seeing them laid out on the shop floor. My memory is that [the steel] was loaded onto barges (the shop was on Neville Island in the middle of the Ohio River) and floated down to St. Louis, but when I did a bit of research it looks like they may have been loaded on to flat cars and transported via rail."