Welcome to day 5 of the June 2020 road trip! The morning was mostly spent saying goodbye to the family before we hit the road once again. Our next destination was Onondaga Cave State Park. It was a little over 4 hours of driving from Jonesboro, Arkansas. Thankfully it was cloudy which made driving easier and less strenuous on the eyes.
It didn't take much for us to reach the Missouri state line, but once we did, we felt completely out of place. I would be lying if I didn't mention my discomfort driving through these small towns, without service on my phone, seeing confederate flags and Trump 2020 signs every couple of minutes. As New Yorkers, I felt like we had a neon sign over our car begging for cops to pull us over for no reason. When I voiced this to Ros, he asked me what I thought he felt like, since he was a couple of shades darker than me.
I tried to play logical thoughts through my mind while I drove, reminding myself that it is unlikely that all these people are also evil or filled with hate. I actually have a couple of friends that are Republicans that voted for Trump back in 2016, even family, and I know they are good people, that simply have different philosophies and beliefs. It was just a weird feeling I couldn't shake off. Thankfully, we didn't have any issues on this trip, considering the stories I heard afterward about people getting pulled over simply because of the NY license plate.
I'm sure part of this concern comes from all the tension we were seeing nationwide at the time over racism and the battle to overcome it. I know for a fact most that have these fears have it worse than myself, and can't even imagine what they go through within their own neighborhoods and cities, not just when they leave their states. Despite this, we did our best to stay focused on our goal and the reason we were doing this road trip, to begin with.
It took us about 4 hours to reach Onondaga Cave State Park, just to find out that it was closed to the public. We didn't want to feel disheartened and agreed to take advantage of the time we had. Exploration was the primary objective. We looked around until we found a map and then looked from the entrance to the nearest trails. There was a nice area with a small river and what felt like ruins. it was really cool being able to walk around the waterside and through the abandoned property.
We then followed a relatively straight forward trail that sat along the river bank. On the other side of the trail, there were some cliffs that were full of holes. It looked like they were dug or carved out, probably by birds and water over time. You could actually see birds fly out of some of the larger holes every now and then. At one point I noticed movement on the floor and saw a tiny snake slithering across the pavement. This is a good point to mention that Ros H.A.T.E.S. snakes. I'm so happy I caught it on video, along with his reaction to it. I felt bad a bit but it was really funny since it was a harmless species.
The trail was only about a mile long, so when we reached the end of it, it became clear that the entrance to the caves wasn't along it. Since the welcome center was closed, they did have an additional sign notifying the public that there wouldn't be any guided tours of the caves due to COVID-19. I was being hopeful that we would find the entrance ourselves but the more we explored, it was very likely that the entrance was somewhere secured and probably locked away from the public. When we walked back to the parking lot, I tried to look around the welcome center and discovered some stairs that lead down into the ground with locked gates. My gut told me that was most likely the entrance we had been searching for and will have to leave that adventure for another trip then.
We decided since we saw everything we could see, that we wouldn't waste more time and go straight to St. Louis. We got back into the car and continued our trip. Our goal was to see the Gateway Arch of course, but Ros added Busch Stadium since on the map it looked close to the arch and piqued his baseball interest. An hour and a half later, we made it to St. Louis! It didn't take long for us to arrive at the Gateway Arch and bask in its grandeur.
We found parking and made out way to the park. Even from our distance, the arch was huge. The closer we got the more it took our breath away. The day was cloudy enough to not hurt our eyes but sunny enough to cast a wonderful shimmer on the metal exterior of the arch. It glistened and we sat under it with awe as we took in the view. I wanted to meet some of the Rangers that worked at this National Park but sadly we had arrived after their shift had ended.
Mom told me that when she had come years before, she took the small elevator that goes up the arch and stops right at the top of the curve. Apparently there are small windows that you can look out through and see the city from above. Sadly, COVID has those areas closed to the public, but hopefully one day we can come back and get the full experience of this wonderful architecture.
Next on the list was to visit Busch Stadium. It was only 4 or 5 blocks away from the arch so we walked there. As expected the area around the stadium was pretty empty, so it gave us a rare opportunity to see the place without huge crowds of tourists. We were both pretty surprised that we could see a great amount of the stadium from the street. We could appreciate the design and layout of the stadium without having to enter. The St. Louis Cardinals had a beautiful home field, and it made us wish we could watch a game there. We read the different signs and boards that they had posted around the stadium that was filled with history and interesting facts about hall of fame members.
My favorite feature was their giant luminous logo that stood across the street. It provided us a unique opportunity to take photos with it, and not have to worry about a line of people waiting. I wish Yankee Stadium had a layout like this. Sadly our city is so cramped that they don't have the space to have a "village" like Busch Stadium does. They have a bunch of shops, restaurants, and statues of past players around the stadium. We saw a similar format when we visited Fenway Park in Boston last year.
This visit has definitely sparked interest in Ros to include different ballparks and stadiums on our trips. Although we are "Yankees" all the way, we can still appreciate different teams and their home fields. We had a lot of fun despite how the trip started in Missouri, but I was really happy we ended on a good note. As the sun began to set, we knew we couldn't linger much longer since we plan to end the day in Jacksonville, Illinois. We returned to the road and completed our trip, arriving close to 10 pm at our friend's house. Let's see what tomorrow holds!
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