Sometimes a Meister vacation is so full of stuff that you wake up on Saturday and go “wow, it’s only Saturday”. I staggered out of bed a little after 8:00 feeling exactly that after a day full of Six Flags fun. The sun was shining through the crack in the curtains in our hotel room, promising another scorching hot June day in Missouri. But we had a trump card to be played (I said I’d never let Taylor live that euchre game down): a trip to Meramec Caverns, where it’s always 57 degrees.
I was less alone at breakfast on this day – people generally were up and about at the same time as me. Mostly I think this had to do with me sleeping later, but I won’t complain either way. I put on shorts and scoffed at the notion of a sweatshirt, then piled with everybody into the GMC to drive west on 44 to the caverns, singing Veggietales all the way. 44 is crowded with big billboards praising Meramec Caverns every few miles, so you know what you’re getting into. I was ready for the full Ozark tourist trap, Branson-style.
In this I was to be disappointed! We got off the interstate and drove on one of those classic Ozark ridgeline roads for a little while, before descending into a river valley – not surprisingly, the Meramec River. Along this idyllic river, campgrounds sprawled for the last mile before the caverns themselves. I would totally camp there if large signs didn’t proclaim that you cannot swim in the river. As it is, that would take like 50% of the fun away. When we got to the actual visitor’s center, it was just… a visitor’s center. Built into the side of a rock face on the riverside, it was nearly indistinguishable from the visitor’s center at, say, Carlsbad Caverns if you didn’t know better. Inside wasn’t that much touristy-er, although maybe the gift shop was a little larger than a similar NPS site.
A few steps into the cave, which was attached to the backside of the visitor’s center, I came upon my first great revelation – it was cooler! God have mercy, it was no longer so hot! I got goosebumps and shivered as my body adjusted, then it was all good. We walked deeper into the cave to the spot where tours jump off from, past a photo opp spot and to wear our tour guide was waiting for us. Our tour group was probably 30-40 people, almost exclusively old, almost exclusively white. Probably the target demographic for cavern tours in central Missouri. Anyways, our guide proved to be reasonably charismatic and reasonably funny, which as I’ve said before always makes experiences like this more enjoyable. He started off by showing us a couple of the big rooms in the cavern, including the room where locals used to host dances until someone realized that maybe you shouldn’t park cars inside a cave. We kept going deeper into the cave – my eyes adjusted to the low light just in time for a big room with some eerie orange light showing wax lookalikes of the famous outlaws, Jessie and Frank James.
Apparently they used Meramec Caverns as a hideout back in the day, the existence of which they knew about from their service in the Confederate Army (ew). When they were bottled up in this part of the caverns by local law enforcement, they waited several days and then escaped in the pitch-darkness through a literal underground river. That’s wild, dude – if you believe the tour guide, which is always a risky proposition.
The next part of the tour was along the banks of the underground river, and into several smaller rooms dominated by stalactites and stalagmites. The sound of water dripping into pools and running off, the shininess of actively forming stalagmites, the sheer pokiness of the caves – you see this in every cavern tour and I love it every single time. I’m proud to announce I do not remember which one is a stalagmite and which one is a stalactite and no, I don’t want to know.
The final part of the tour, deep into the cave, began in the “Wine Room”. You had to walk up a long flight of slick steps, holding tight to the guardrail the whole time, to get up to a room that was of course most notable for this feature. You decide if it’s a wine table.
Also note the “grapes” in the background, the little balls behind it. Taylor and Kyle saw the wine table. Elizabeth saw something inappropriate.
Back down the stairs and through a room with psychedelic lighting was a room that sort of resembled a theatre – a giant stalag-something screen, and plenty of space for the Cavern owners to install seating. Apparently an old governor loved Meramec Caverns so much that he had Kate Smith sing God Bless America here, so they reproduce that small moment in history for visitor’s. It was cute, but I couldn’t help but giggle a little at the cheesiness, which earned me a glare from another tourist. Sorry for ruining your experience.
Our tour ended after this. Like I said, I was quite surprised by how serious and not tourist-y the whole thing was. The cavern is pretty well-preserved, and the tour was enjoyable! I showed my support by buying a Meramec Caverns pin for my pinboard.
On the way back toward St. Louis, the family decided to stop at St. Louis Bread Company. I was intrigued by this interesting-sounding restaurant but didn’t know what I wanted. Elizabeth showed me the menu in the car. Then we got there and I realized it was just Panera, which apparently has a different name in St. Louis. That is what I call bad marketing! My Panera was thoroughly mediocre and overpriced as all Panera is destined to be. A far more exciting use of my afternoon occurred immediately afterward, when we stopped inside another St. Louis-themed chain – the grocery store called “Schnuck’s”. Yes, I made everyone go to it just because it was called Schnuck’s. Was it worth spending 30 minutes of my vacation time? Don’t be silly, of course it was.
Back at the hotel, we faced a classic conundrum: keep making Meister Family Vacation Memories or take a nap? To Kyle, the answer was easy: he collapsed on the bed into a nap. I felt the same temptation, but after lying in a stupor for a few dozen minutes I rallied myself and the troops. We had probably wasted too much time to go mini-golf, a severe blow indeed from Kyle’s perspective, but we could at least do one of the Let’s Roam tours that Elizabeth’s cousins specialize in. So we drove downtown, while I monitored increasing storm clouds on the northern horizon.
Those storm clouds would be a literal, not metaphorical, issue by the time we got to downtown St. Louis to start our scavenger hunt. Not that we didn’t have our share of issues with the Let’s Roam app – it took Elizabeth and myself like half an hour to figure out how to set it up. Once we did, the hunt began at the Old Courthouse just across the highway from the Gateway Arch. It was a beautiful building, although my memory is marred somewhat by the fact that the hunt incorrectly stated that Dred Scott *successfully* sued for his freedom there, which, uh… From there, the tour moved north and west away from the arch, past old-time exchange and banking buildings in the historic part of the town. We had just reached about the furthest location from our starting point when the sound of thunder became unmistakable. I could see lightning as well. The storm was going to miss us, but just barely, and we were going to hear a lot of loud thunder, so I suggested we retreat indoors. The retreat was executed smoothly and without any losses to the group to an advantageous location – a corner bar in the middle of happy hour. Their happy hour deal was alcoholic limeades, so stopping for those and some pretzels became a no-brainer. The storm rumbled by overhead, and after 45 minutes we were back to being damn tourists in downtown St. Louis.
The scavenger hunt’s back half pivoted from history to some of the local art scenes, including the Citygarden Park, home to many statues that I didn’t understand. There was also a stop at another sculpture that as best I could tell was just some pieces of metal sitting upright (seriously. I’m not going to bother looking it’s name up, but it was a metal triangle the size of a city block. What a use of space). Finally, the tour wound back toward Busch Stadium, past the Ballpark Village area, and down to the church right across from the Gateway Arch. It was a little bit hokey and touristy to do, but just like the one in Tulsa, I found myself enjoying the scavenger hunt for letting me see more of the city’s history than I would have otherwise.
Finding a place to eat dinner late on a Saturday evening in downtown St. Louis turned out to be an adventure. Taylor had suggested a place called Ballpark Village, but as it turned out, Ballpark Village was just not a great place to have a family dinner. A giant, open-concept club setting, there were different bars scattered around the edge with tables and beer pong and live music in the middle. It would have been fun with Taylor and Kyle and Elizabeth (kind of. It was a bit too loud for me). It was definitely not good with Alex and two parents, one whom has a hearing aid. Once we’d established that we needed to find a new place, two issues opened up: there were no restaurants around, and the ones that were all closed soon. After one false start at a bar downtown where apparently everyone got kicked out in less than three minutes, we found a restaurant a little away from downtown – Square One Brewery in downtown St. Louis. Square One turned out to be a gem – not a long wait, a cozy bar with a larger dining room behind, good beer flights for Taylor and Elizabeth, and great food options for everyone. I’d say that it pretty easily was my favorite meal of the weekend. My chicken sandwich and cole slaw were pretty damn good.
To finish off the night, we took Elizabeth’s one request from the trip – a visit to Clementine’s Naughty and Nice ice cream, a pretty self-explanatorily named little shop within Lafayette Square. This place apparently boasted some world famous ice cream, especially their gooey butter cake flavor. I went in with high expectations, which is always dangerous when getting ice cream. Fortunately, I was not disappointed by the product, which turned out to truly be top-notch. As a bonus, I got to try Kyle’s alcoholic ice cream, which was rum with a little ice cream mixed in. Whew.
It had been a long day. It had been a Meister vacation day. As always, nobody could find fault with our effort level. Touring some cool caverns, seeing some presumably cool statues, eating some cold ice cream – we’d turned the temperature all the way down on June. I fought to keep my eyes open on the drive back to the hotel, with anvil crawlers on the car’s right and Kyle streaming the NBA playoffs on the left. I barely managed to stay awake in the hotel room, solely in spite so that I could see Kevin Durant choke. Once that was done, I fell to blissful sleep.
