It took us two days to actually leave Memphis. Before we did, we took in a flick on the Big Screen, visited the local Kinkos and got a taste of the local food and dialect at Steak Escape. This was a food-court joint, lined up in a gargantuan mall right alongside Chinese Food To Go, an A&W, and an "authentic" Cajun buffet. There were three employees behind the counter—cashier, cooker, and comic, respectively. The cashier, with whom conversation is most important, spoke some other language disguised as English. It's pretty amazing we got even close to what we ordered. The cooker came over to clarify, since apparently the cashiers written comments were about as decipherable as her spoken word. The comic just grinned enthusiastically and wished us a wonderful evening. We grinned back and wished him the same. In the end, Brant raved about his steak sandwich for days, and so the 10 minutes it took to clarify the order was worth it.
Memphis was good to us. But we left committing a mortal sin: we passed up Graceland. Elvis please forgive.
When we pulled out on Friday morning we headed towards Nashville. For about 30 miles. And then we couldn't really figure out why we were going east again, and so we changed course and re-routed up to St. Louis, Missouri. Momunent to Westward Expansion. City of The Arch.
The Bridge to St. Louis.
About 20 miles shy of St. Louis proper, we headed into a KOA for the night. There we almost added a third member to The Extreme Road Trip.
Two sites down from ours, tied up to an empty fifth wheel trailer, a red bone coon hound pup sat wondering why she was all by herself. So, of course, we had to give her some attention. Which eventually led to our temporary (though complete) adoption of her. She had two tags on her collar, but they both only said "rabies," so we just called her that. Her rightful owner (who in my mind I had painted out to be an absolute thug, which made it easier to begin to justify my kid napping plan) returned by nightfall and showered her with love and apologies. So we let him keep her.
We drove in to check out the city and discovered how ridiculous the road and highway system are in St. Louis. We missed turns, drove into the ghetto, crossed a bridge into Illinois, and generally got spun around for about 30 minutes, all the while with our destination in sight. When we finally made it to a parking spot close enough to walk to the Arch, we forked over three bucks to the parking lot attendant who assured us that as long as we didn't park on the far side of the lot, we probably wouldn't be broken into.
AK at the base of the Arch.
Thus reassured (not), we strolled along the Mississippi towards the great momunent. And as we neared, we discovered that indeed, it is truly great. In fact, we ranked it at the top of all architectural structures we had ever heard of or bore witness to. Twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty, the three-sided stainless steel structure gleamed as a silver rainbow over the beautifully landscaped grounds. Underneath a museum, theater and gift shop sprawled subterraineously. The Arch is awe-inspiring.
Looking up.
Famished, we headed to Lacede's (sp?) Landing for some grub. We landed at Jake's Steaks. Sort of a south west, tex-mex, bbq style joint. Which was odd considering our geographical location. But regardless of how far from the border we were, Jake knew how to chef it up right.
So on our drive back to camp, full and happy, we decided we'd need to get up at six in the morning to make it on time to our Saturday activity.
We had plans to scuba dive in a flooded lead mine in the middle of Missouri. Intrigued?
