Rivers West Tour - Day 3 (The Gateway Arch)

It rained hard most of the night so we were concerned about today's events, but the rain went away as we waited for the bus and stayed away all day.

We took two tour buses to the Gateway Arch, the Bellefontaine Cemetery where William Clark is buried and an interpretive museum on the river.

First, the arch.  I'd been before, but David never had and I don't remember half of the exhibits.  While waiting for our tickets, we wandered around outside. 

The Gateway Arch

Close up of Arch Leg

A friend offered to take our picture

View of the other side from the grounds

Our first stop was a movie about the building of the arch and then a tram ride to the top of the arch.  The tram cubicles are very small and can barely hold five people.  We only had four people in ours; because of David's size, a fifth wouldn't fit.  The following pictures were projected onto the tram doors while you waited to board.

 It was an interesting ride that takes four minutes to get to the top and three and a half minutes to get back down.  At first it feels like your pod is climbing the stairs, but then it evens out and just climbs smoothly.  Near the top, it feels like the pod is climbing stairs again.  The floor at the top is not level and the windows are fairly small vertically.  I took the next two pictures to show the view from the top as opposed to the view from the ground.

And the view out the other side:

 

 

As we entered the exhibit hall, they took our picture.  Since we purchased the photo, they sent us some digital photos also.

On our way out, there was this mock up of the tram pod so you can see how small it is.