St Louis, MO 22 miles; The Arch; Old 66

Gateway to the West, Old 66 "Chain of Rocks Bridge"

The hotel was located almost at the base of St Louis' "Gateway to the West" Arch (see above). When I began the ride, I couldn't help but ride straight to this wondrous sculpture and do a loop around each of the founding ends. That is how the ride started out. The temperature was in the high 70s with some humidity in the air. A nice day for a ride, once I found the river trail! This river trail went north along the, ah, river. I immediately noticed some local artwork along the path in front of an electrical plant. The trail did not appear to be very well maintained. Now clearly in an industrial area "bollards"

as they were called, had been knocked down allowing for motor vehicles to enter the non motorized path. There were plenty of indications that this had been done; dirty tire tracks on the road. The trail began weaving in and out of water barriers, apparently when the river gets high they close these. For the next 3 miles I traveled, almost thru junk yard after junk yard. The Smell at times was horrendous at times!

At about mile 4 I was out of this section. Stopping at a fountain for water (in my hurry to leave I neglected to fill my camelback) no water! The fountain was dry! In the end I did find another fountain on the trail that actually did work. Looking back on it, the ride was not the great, but there were a few surprises. When I was planning my ride I had noticed a pedestrian only bridge that spanned the entire Mississippi! This was where my ride was to end. This bridge turned out to be the original bridge that transported American's from one side of the river to the other, when traveling the famed route 66! And, it must have been about 2 miles in length. There were some nice relics along the way, still run down as if it had been forgotten like the rest of the trail. On my way back there was a highway crossing with a button to stop traffic. I hit the button and the light immediately turned yellow and red. I was glad that I looked for traffic as a truck decided that he didn't need to stop and what was clearly a red light! My ride ended with a stop at one of the locally famous barbecue joints. The place I had found was called Bogart's. Bogart's had been rated highly numerous times on the yelp site. I would say that Bogarts lived to its name!