Cahokia Mounds and St. Louis- Wednesday, July 24, 2019

     Once we got into the hotel room last night, we were all too tired to do anything more.  Julie didn't even open her "loot bag" from the Doctor Who store until this morning.  We also didn't want to leave the room because the hallway didn't seem to really have a floor.  There was some plywood covered by a carpet,  but they were working on it apparently, and we had to tread cautiously over it.  We had no idea what kind of hole was underneath it.

     The start of our trip took us through Indianapolis again.  We saw Lucas Oil Stadium again today.  It's where the Colts play, and it's such a unique looking building that we probably wouldn't have even guessed that it was a stadium if it didn't have a big sign on it saying so.  We drove until after lunch.  At lunch, Emma said that she was not going to come with us on our next vacation if we were going to drive somewhere.  Scott agreed with her that the driving had been tough, with very little payoff this time so far.  We certainly had a full afternoon though.

     Our first stop was the site of the Cahokia mounds.  These Native American mounds were made by a culture that archaeologists call the "Mississippian" culture, though we know very little about them.  The mounds were constructed over a thousand years ago.  They were part of a complex society, and the community of Cahokia, in what is now Southern Illinois and Eastern Missouri, was a city of more than 20,000 people.  It was the largest city in North America until Philadelphia surpassed it in the 1800s.  For some reason, the people who had lived at Cahokia had abandoned the city around 1200 AD, long before the Europeans arrived here.

     The state park here has a great museum in its visitors center.  We started with a 17 minute film that introduced the Mississippian culture and the city and mounds of Cahokia.  At the end of the film, the screen was raised up to reveal a life-sized diorama of what the people and houses of Cahokia might have looked like.  We exited the theater into a small but detailed museum of artifacts that have been uncovered here and recreations of life then.  We often like small museums that focus on one particular story, but tell it well, like this one.  It reminded us of the museums at the La Brea tar pits or the Oregon Trail.  It was also pretty quiet, except that a bus full of elementary school students got there just as we did.

     After the museum, we drove across the street to the "Monks Mound," the largest of the existing mounds by far.  It is 100 feet high and is flat on top, with a large open area where a temple stood.  There are modern steps to the top, but there are over 150 of them, and the temperature was a little over 80 degrees.  Julie wisely chose to stay at the bottom, and Emma stayed with her, so only Scott ended up climbing to the top.  There was quite a nice view of the surrounding mounds, and the famous arch and skyline of St. Louis was visible in the haze in the distance.  Scott has talked about Cahokia and this mound in particular every year that he has taught 7th grade, and enjoyed being here.  As we left, we also drove past, "Woodhenge," a series of circles of wooden poles that the Cahokians had built that functioned as a solar calendar, much as Stonehenge did in England.  The poles there now are modern replacements, of course.

     Julie was the first to discover that we hadn't noticed that we had crossed into a new time zone.  The extra hour that we gained here would give us enough time to see some of the St. Louis Zoo.  We continued on into St. Louis and saw the Gateway Arch as we crossed the Mississippi River as well as Busch Stadium where the Cardinals play and other interesting looking buildings.  As we crossed the Mississippi River, we also officially added Missouri to the list of states we've been to.

     Our friend Ollie, whom Scott knows from 1812 re-enacting, is a retired zoo keeper from Toronto.  He had once told Julie that one of his favorite zoos was the St. Louis Zoo, so Julie wanted to see that if we could.  The zoo actually is pretty cool.  It's also free, which we were pleased to discover, and our Buffalo Zoo membership (which we had recently renewed) allowed us to buy "Adventure Passes" for extras at a discounted price.

     Julie wanted to use the Adventure Passes to ride around the zoo on its trains to get an overview of it first.  Once we tried to board the train though, Scott found it too hard to get on.  His right knee has been "kinda hinky" for a while now.  In spite of the fact that he had made it up to the top of the Monks Mound at Cahokia (or maybe because of the fact that he had climbed it), he couldn't get himself into the small train car and get turned around properly, so excused himself and said he would meet Emma and Julie at the stingray exhibit, where they planned to get off.  That would have worked fine, but Julie and Emma got off a station too soon, so even though Scott beat the train there, they weren't on it when he arrived.

     The three of us soon reunited at the stingray exhibit, which Julie was excited about seeing.  It was included in our "Adventure Pass," so we waited in line there for a little while.  Once we were in, Julie and Emma were able to reach in and touch the stingrays as they swam by, very much like they had at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago two years ago.  Scott was happy just taking pictures and video.  By the time we were done there, it was getting close to 4:00 Central, and we were getting hungry.  We got dinner at the nearby cafe, where we had a beautiful view of pelicans as well as ducks and geese while we ate.  Scott and Emma said that they were taunting the birds by eating boneless chicken wings while they were watching, but the birds didn't seem perturbed at all.  One of the pelicans was catching fish or something while he was floating around the lake.

     After dinner, we technically had only a short while left before the zoo closed, so Scott suggested we look for the hippos, since we don't usually get to see those.  We went to the large section called "River's Edge."  The set-up here reminded us of the winding paths at Disney's Animal Kingdom.  The path was heavily shaded and as you followed the trail, there were lots of ways to peek through to see the animals.  This area featured animals that can be found along the rivers of the world, but that includes a lot of different animals, including rhinos, elephants, "painted dogs," "red river hogs," "dwarf mongooses" (or is that "dwarf mongeese"?) and, of course, the hippos.  There was an upper and a lower place to view the hippos, but real show was watching the hippos swim by in the lower area.  Since it was a warm afternoon, a lot of the animals that we saw were hiding away or sleeping, but the three hippos were active and swimming in circles.  The water was murky but every so often a hippo would emerge out of the greenness and swim by the windows.  We've seen hippos before, but so often they don't seem to be doing much except sleeping and sunning themselves.  It was fun watching these guys swim around.  (Although, one did poop as he swam by Julie and Emma.)   We could have watched them for a while, but Julie was getting overheated and we decided it was time to say goodbye to the zoo.  We went to the gift shop, bought the traditional zoo pins, and found the car.

     So far, we really like what we've seen of St. Louis.  The zoo is in the part of St. Louis called "Forest Park."  This great area not only has a huge park, but also the science museum, the historical museum and several other institutions. While we were in the area, Scott really wanted to find the equestrian statue of General Franz Sigel.  Sigel was a German immigrant who ended up leading many other German immigrants to the defense of the Union in the American Civil War.  He was not a great general, but he was an important symbol of the German community and their contributions to the war.  "I Goes to Fight Mit Sigel," was the German soldier's motto.  Since Sigel did his main fighting in the Western theater of the war, there aren't monuments to him in the Eastern battlefields like Gettysburg that we usually visit.  By the time "his" Germans got to places like Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, he had been replaced by General O.O. Howard.  This monument in St. Louis is pretty cool looking.  Sigel is sitting on his horse, binoculars in hand, peering off into the distance ready to lead his men to the sounds of the guns.  Curiously, his name does not seem to be on the monument.  Its inscription says that the monument is "to remind future generations of the heroism of the German-American patriots of St. Louis and vicinity in the Civil War."  We will be visiting a few battlefields that he fought at before this trip is over.

    We then found our way to the hotel near the airport.  We were pleased to see that it was much nicer than last nights.  In fact, our room has a kitchenette area, a couch, and is quite comfortable.  We checked in with the news. (Robert Mueller's testimony today).  Anna "Facetimed" us because she was excited to show that she (and Grandpa Wright, apparently) had set up the crib that Julie got for her birthday.  The new baby will be sleeping in our room for a little while after he or she finally arrives.  Anna has the mattress in the crib, the sheets on it, and the stuffed elephant waiting for it to be filled now.

     Since we were rested and cooled down, we played with the idea of going to the Gateway Arch in the evening, but ultimately decided we were still a little too tired for that and we will save it for tomorrow morning.  We went looking for a place to get some snacks and drinks, and the woman who was working at our front desk (rather grumpily) said we'd have to try some of the nearby hotels.  That sounded odd to us, but we walked across the parking lot to the next one.  We were blown away by how nice that one was.  We had been very satisfied with our hotel when we first checked in, but this one had glass elevators and lobby fountains, and seemed like the kind of place you would expect a Walt Disney World monorail to pass through.  Anyway, there was a TGI Friday's in the lower lobby, so we rode the glass elevator down to the fountains and got some appetizers and drinks there.  We saved a piece of celery for the little rabbit that we saw by the parking lot, but he was to scared of us to eat it.