Vacation as seen by Chuck - Part 4 - the Garfield Trail

Saturday 7/11 was our last day of vacation.  We'd stopped the night before in Gas City, IN.  I only knew about this place because it's usually where the Spouse stops on his way home from Arkansas.

Grant County Indiana is where the artist Jim Davis is from.  He's the guy who draws the Garfield cartoons.  So of course there's the Garfield Trail here where there are 14 different statues of Garfield throughout the county.

Garfield Trail

this is #1 on the brochure - each paw pad has a little tidbit about Jim Davis or Garfield.

We didn't go by numerical order, more like map order - it cut down on the back & forth.

"Cool Cat" Garfield doesn't have a plaque but he's standing outside the James Dean Museum in Fairmount.  There was a family coming out of the museum as we got there so I chatted with the mom and they were also visiting from Michigan!   

Glass Blower Garfield happened to be right next to City Hall, so he had to play on the tank!

I love looking up high school mascots for podunk little towns.  

This has got to be one of the best! 

This was in the pro shop of a golf course!

Which explains why you can only visit during daylight hours between April & November!

Another one we were happy to visit - it's in the Marion Public Library.

Since we went on a Saturday, we were concerned if they were open or not. 

They were open and the librarians at the desk didn't even give me & Chuck a second glance!

This took most of the morning, so we were on our way home after this!

Woohoo!

Vacation as seen by Chuck - Part 3

Thursday 7/9 we stopped at "the Squatch" for breakfast.  I had a sandwich called the Hog Wild - a toasted croissant with ham, bacon, cheddar, bacon aioli and bacon jam.  We also missed stopping at the "Haunted Grounds Coffee".  On the list for next time!  

On our way out of town, we stopped at the Christ of the Ozarks.  I had fully planned to leave Chuck in the car, since I ~DO~ know when it's inappropriate to take him someplace.... but the lady at the gate was highly entertained by him and said even skeletons need to be saved.... so I took him!

Fun fact (according to the Rocket driver from the last post) this statue was supposed to be like a foot taller, but with it being on top of a mountain, it would have needed an aircraft warning light on top of his head - so they cut a foot off the bottom to avoid that!

Lunch at Cracker Barrel....

We stopped that night in St Louis with plans for playing tourist the next day.

The Gateway Arch!

Talk about an optical illusion - it's 630' tall AND wide!

We took a tram ride up into the Arch.

We bought tickets for a specific time and when we checked in, they gave us boarding passes and we moved into the staging area and stood on our #1 spot.  After the safety briefing and watching a little video, we moved thru the area where they took our tourist picture and we went upstairs to wait by our tram car. 

They were showing videos comparing heights of various monuments & such.

Load up!

There are 8 cars, able to hold 5 people (very cozily) but only the Spouse & I were in our car. 

There are also north side and south side trams. 

The view out the car.

Once we got out, the cars were loaded and took them back down, unloaded & reloaded and came back up - that's when we loaded back up to go down.  You get less that 10 minutes at the top.  

View from the top

The red structure over to the left is Busch Stadium, home of the St Louis MLB team (you can tell I prefer hockey since I can't remember the name of the baseball team- I keep thinking the Blues but I know that's wrong!) 

After we came down from the Arch, had a snack and visited the virtual reality theater we went out for the Riverboat cruise on the Mississippi River.  

The Cardinals!  That's the baseball team!

Photo grabbed from here

since you can't see it from the dock!

We made the mistake of going and sitting by the water for a bit and 85 million people got in line before us for boarding.  So all the chairs on the outside decks were taken, so we sat inside the cafeteria area.  But large windows & a/c were OK by me!

"Ranger Nate" came by with activity books for anyone who wanted to get qualified as a junior ranger.

Then we got to go "get sworn in" and got junior ranger badges!

Once we made our way back to the car, we were back on the road.

Next stop, Gas City Indiana!