Gills-A-GoGo: Arch Field Trip

On Friday, G and I went to the St Louis Arch for his field trip. His classmates H and Z were also in my group. We had a great time! Here you can see G and the guys touching the top of the Arch.

We have known H from Scouts for a few years now, and Dad G has always thought of him as a 40 year old man given his mature looking face but, yep, he is a 4th grader.

Our view out the windows at the top was not too hot with the foggy skies we’ve had all week, but it was still exciting. This is our view of the Illinois side, aka East St. Louis. When we exited and was asked by a ranger what we were able to see, G exclaimed, with a little much enthusiasm I thought,

“I saw The Casino Queen!”

Looking out here, we are up 360 feet, for your information. And just a little fascinating tidbit for you, one of my very favorites actually, the legs of the Arch are exactly 360 feet apart. It is as wide as it is tall. And, warning, now the Arch tidbits are just gonna flow. I can’t help myself! I love the Arch. Official name: Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.

Shouldn’t this entry be required writing of, say, a 4th grader?

The idea of the Arch originated in 1947, a result of a St. Louis architectural design contest to construct a national monument to represent Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and the 1804-1806 Lewis and Clark Expedition he commissioned to explore this brand new land of the United States. Eero Saarinen, a Finnish immigrant, won the competition.

Construction began February 12, 1963, the day before my dad turned eighteen years old. The final section was fitted into place in October 1965, five days after my parents were married. It was built at a cost of $13 million dollars. And sadly, Mr. Saarinen had died of a brain tumor in 1961 at age 51, before the Arch construction even began. He designed other famous works in his lifetime, including Washington Dulles Airport.

Also, interestingly, in order to ensure that the constructed legs would meet at the top of the Arch, the margin of error for failure was 1/64th of an inch. All survey work was done at night to eliminate distortion caused by the sun's rays. Since the Arch was constructed before computer technology, relatively crude instruments were used for these crucial measurements. What a wonder! Here we are in our little egg pod for the tram ride back down. We were just speculating how someone super tall like an NBA star would take a ride in the egg pod. The boys decided he would need a private pod. No seating 5 big guys, for sure.

The ride up takes 4 minutes and the ride down lasts 3 minutes.

I quickly leaned in and snapped a camera shot, telling G this would be nice picture of son and mom togetherness with he and I on our Arch trip. I had no idea at the time this is what he was doing until this showed on the screen.