French Lick IN: St. Louis

We drove from French Lick to St. Louis on August 13, 2021, the fastest way, along freeways rushing west.   We arrived in St. Louis with time for a visit to the Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Park and then for our endowment session at the St. Louis Temple.  

I just finished reading an 800-page biography of Grant, and I admire him greatly, as both an excellent Civil War general and a U.S. president who insisted on preserving the rights of freed slaves, even as the South resorted to lynchings and the beginning of Jim Crow.  I wanted to see the homestead discussed in the book.  

This farm was where Grant courted and married his wife, and where Grant’s wife reluctantly set free her slaves.  Grant was born in Ohio and raised in Illinois.  His family and his wife’s family loathed each other, since the Grants were abolitionists and the Dents (Grant’s wife’s family) were slaveholders.  Later, Grant bought the Missouri farm from his father-in-law.

Much of the old farm is now St. Louis subdivisions, but the farmhouse has been preserved by the National Park Service.

When the man at the recommend desk of the St. Louis Temple saw our names, he asked if we were related to a missionary named Spendlove who served in St. Louis a few years ago.  Dave quickly said that was his nephew, Nicholas Spendlove (Alan's son).  The man said that Nicholas had eaten at his house many times.  Small world!

After dinner, Dave dropped me off at the St. Louis Art Museum. It is one of the grand old Midwestern art museums.  Its treasures were bought with money from Gilded Age donors at a time when great art, and particularly Impressionist paintings, were cheap.

 I especially enjoyed the exhibit on Nubian art and history.  Nubia is up-river from Egypt, and is now known as the Sudan.  It was one of the little known, great civilizations of antiquity.

St. Louis has one of the most beautiful botanical gardens in the country.  We visited it on Saturday morning, August 14, 2021.  There were many themed gardens—a rose garden, herb garden, Chinese garden, Japanese garden, Victorian garden, and others. We rode a tram around the whole garden, and then spent time returning to special gardens that intrigued us.  

An artist had created sculptures that looked like they were made of origami paper, although they were actually folded metal.  They were installed throughout the garden.

The Japanese garden was a favorite.

Another origami sculpture.

The French garden had classical statues and formal flower beds.

Dave wanted to ride to the top of the St. Louis Arch.

We were packed into a small cubicle and whisked, inside the cubicle, to the top of the arch.  Luckily, the cubicle was just big enough so that I didn’t feel claustrophobic!  There were two of us in a tiny cubicle into which the guides sometimes squeezed five people.  The doors to the cubicles are on the right in this photo.

The view from the top of the arch was amazing.  On one side was the historic courthouse where the Dred Scott decision was decided.  That was one of the events that precipitated the Civil War.  On the other side was the Mississippi River.

After descending the Arch, we took a riverboat tour along the Mississippi.  The water was brown, the sun was hot, and manufacturing plants lined the banks.  No matter.  Dave and I love any sort of boat ride!

We had a great view of the Arch and the city of St. Louis behind it, as we sailed the Mississippi.