St. Louis and onward

After leaving our friends and the beautiful fall colors in Wausau, WI, we headed south through Wisconsin and Illinois in the general direction of St. Louis.  We're taking our time and trying to limit our daily mileage to less than 250 miles, and alternating our stays between Wal Marts and campgrounds.  We've not traveled through this part of the country, so we're trying to go a bit slower and smell a few of the roses.
We'd skirted the St. Louis area before on the west side, but had never stopped to see any sights.  This time we took the time to go into the city and tour the Gateway Arch and the associated museum.  We stayed at a park on the Illinois side of the river which was about 40 miles out of town, and took a day to drive in and wander around a little.  Here are some pictures of our visit on a beautiful fall day --

A couple of shots of the arch as we approached it










These are the little pods that you ride in -- with a supposed capacity of 5 people (but they all better be pretty small or very friendly people).  You crowd into these things for 4 1/2 minutes while the train of them crawl up the inside framework of the arch.  An interesting way (and probably the only one) to get to the top.


Some of the views of the St. Louis area from the viewing area at the top of the arch -- 630 feet up:

                                 







The mighty Mississippi











Looking straight down from the window









Busch Stadium - home of the St. Louis Cardinals









Downtown St. Louis looking West











They also had a great museum at the site and two theaters which showed several outstanding documentary films -- one about Louis and Clark and the other about the building of the arch.  We'd recommend the whole park -- its called the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, and is run by the NPS.
We'd wanted to take a bit more time, but there were a couple of weather fronts chasing us, and we'd decided to take another more easterly route, which would allow us to stop for a few days and visit Mammoth Cave in Kentucky before heading to Alabama.  We got ahead of the front, spent a leisurely night at a Wal Mart in Owensboro, KY and then rolled into Cave City on Wednesday.  We'd located a park (map) with very attractive rates -- and highly rated -- that was just outside Mammoth Cave, and would allow us to stay several days and explore the area.  We had a great 4 1/2 hour tour of the cave yesterday, and although it rained a bit last night, the sun is back out this morning and we're getting ready to get out and explore the Bowling Green, KY area today -- the Corvette Museum looks like it might be interesting.
We're only a couple of hundred miles from Red Bay, so we'll head out of here on Sunday and get to the Tiffin factory a day or two ahead of time and see if we can get things started early there.  We're having a couple of custom items done to the coach (new shift panel and a bedroom ceiling fan), along with some holdover warranty items and the 2 year engine/chassis service -- all at three different places -- so we'll probably be there for at least 10 days.