Going through some other recent folders until I can get back out of the street. Besides the aquarium, Union Station has a ropes course/zip line/aerial challenge feature.It's scary but perfectly safe. People are suspended in a strong harness, shown here, connected by a heavy cable to an overhead track. You couldn't fall if you tried. All comers are welcome, even if you are not as lithe as the daring young man on the flying trapeze.
This pic was taken on the same day as the last few posts, some distance north at the old river town of Grafton, Illinois. Long ago there was a booming boat building industry. Times and technology change. The big hit came from the Great Flood of 1993. We flew out of STL at the height of it and it looked like there was a sixth great lake around the confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri and Illinois rivers.
Part of Grafton is along the riverside and part up the bluffs. The low lying parts were inundated while the section on the hills survived. The population went from something over 1,000 to 600. There is no need for a lighthouse on the river. The pushboats' GPS navigation systems are all that's needed. The lighthouse is just a symbol of return.
I wanted to post a picture of an unusual design feature of the Chain of Rocks Bridge but I'm going to have to go back and find a better viewpoint. For now, we have this marker on the eastern side in Illinois. Route 66, made most famous by St. Louisan Chuck Berry, is no longer an official U.S. highway designation. But as the song had it
Well it goes from St Louis, Joplin, Missouri
Oklahoma City looks ooh, so pretty
You'll see Amarillo and Gallup, New Mexico
Flagstaff, Arizona don't forget Winona
Kingsman, Barstow, San Bernadino
The original route ran within a moderate walk of my home.. Now it's something to remember and perhaps make a buck off.
This is the Illinois entrance to the old Chain of Rocks Bridge I've discussed lately. Hard to believe that this narrow strip, as part of Route 66, was once the major auto and truck crossing on the central Mississippi. After it went out of business, so to speak, there was talk of demolishing it. The reason it was not razed is that the price of scrap metal was so low it wasn't worth the bother. Now it's managed by the National Park Service and you can walk, run, bike of skate across.
"Castles in the air" is an English expression that means dreams, hopes, or plans that are impossible, unrealistic. We don't have any of that around here, except occasionally about our Missouri state government. (OMG! 😖) We do, however, have a couple of small castles in the water. No half-witted medieval lord would build something so impractical.
Actually, they are disused water pumping stations in the Mississippi. (For some reason, we now get our water out of the Missouri although it has a lot more mud.) The background is the northern tip of the City of St. Louis proper. The outline of the city limits looks like a teardrop, which has some poetry. Anyway, the rapids you see in the background are part of the chain of rocks mentioned in Sunday's post.
