Monday was a long day for me. I woke up at 4 in the morning to drive 2 hours into Minneapolis to take a 17 hour train ride to St Louis.

I thought I would have a pretty quiet week with my grandparents, recovering a few months of lost sleep.

Fortunately, Erin was determined to make my week as exciting as possible.

I jokingly suggested that she drive up to St Louis to visit me for the weekend, and I'm not quite sure what was in her bloodstream, but she found that the greatest idea in the world.

Tuesday night, as I was going to sleep, I received a text message saying, "See you tomorrow!" I found this idea awesome. Unrealistic and unlikely, but awesome nonetheless.

I woke up early Wednesday to visit the school my grandma teaches at, and got another text around 11 in the am, "Welcome to Kentucky!" This slightly surprised me. It also started a rough mental countdown in my brain until her arrival. Which arrived around 3 that afternoon.



We spent a good while deciding what our next adventure would be, deciding finally upon an adventure in photography: the sunrise at the Gateway Arch in St Louis.

Weather, however, had different ideas. Clouds dominated the sky for most of the night and into the next day. So we took a detour and went to the bookstore outlet at Warrenton Outlets.

Once 8 o'clock rolled around though, the sun was out and we were eager to get on the road. And that we did.

The hour long drive into the city was dominated by the anticipation of seeing the skyline rise out of the night. It finally came, and we immediately started searching for our perfect vantage point of the city. This turned out to be a time-consuming task.

We saw all the parts of St Louis I didn’t really wanna see. Driving almost all the way around the city, we came upon a street that suddenly darkened and were surrounded by abandoned warehouses and train tracks. Taking a left, we started to drive down a road that was between a concrete wall and the Mississippi river on the right.

Honestly, I didn’t really know where anything is in this town. So I had no clue that the arch was about 30 seconds in front of us. But sure enough, there it was. Big and silver and bold, the Gateway to the West.

But silly me, I saw the no parking signs and decided to show off my directional skills to Erin, and ended up taking a 15 minute detour back around the whole city. I’m so smart.



But finally, we parked in front of the steps that lead up to the arch and began our ascent to photographic glory. And after a short moment contemplating our victory and looking over the second largest river in the world, we began an hour and a half long photo shoot that included the Arch, the old capitol building, traffic, and big ole tugboats on the water. Laying in the mud, being stared at by drivers, and ultimately getting run off the grounds by security guards were the highlights of the shoot, along with our perfect timing. As we were leaving, two tour buses full of highschoolers emptied themselves onto our park.

So we left. And on the way back we spotted a fantastic gothic church, and made a quick pitstop to document the discovery.

The rest of the night was composed of Jack Johnson, Wes Anderson movies, and the wonderfully distracting sounds of the noise machine in my room. It provided hours of fun.

Erin left me Friday afternoon, and again sent me victory texts at every milestone of the return trip. Upon arrival, we both decided that our adventures are too few and far between.


So this is the first of many adventures Erin and I are likely to take.