Wednesday, Sept 14
Scott Air Force Base FamCamp
We arrived at Scott Air Force Base around 3 pm, and because of traffic, we exited the highway and Okawville and came in a back way.
The Air Force Base is located 17 miles east of downtown St. Louis. Scott Field was one of thirty-two Air Service training camps established after the United States entered World War I in April 1917. It is the headquarters of the Air Mobility Command (AMC) and the U.S. Transportation Command.
We came in through the main gate, also known as the Shiloh Gate. The Famcamp was located on the other side of the flight line, so we had to drive around the flight line and golf course to get to the campground.
The campground had 22 RV sites and was broken up into sections. One had concrete sites, while ours had gravel. The sites were all different lengths and unevenly spaced. The site had nice shade trees, except they were oak, and the acorns fell upon us continuously throughout the day and night, which made a loud noise on a camper roof. I was also worried about damage. The utilities were placed in different spots on each site, and the water connections were not connected to the power source. I had to stretch my 50-foot hose out to get water to the camper. All sites had water and electricity, but you had to use the dump for sewage. Two fishing ponds were nearby, and a small public shower house with laundry. The cost was $22/night, so it was good for the cost. Reservations could only be made 30 days in advance, and many sites were filled with long-term campers.
Our site was close to another site, but it was empty the entire time we were there.
Old Herald Brewery and Distillery
We stayed off the highway and drove back country roads into Collinsville to the Old Herald Brewery and Distillery. It is in the old Collinsville Herald newspaper building, established in 1879. The brewery and distillery were opened in 2019. They had a great outdoor courtyard with a bandstand and an ice cream stand.
We sat outside on their nice patio and ordered a flight of four beers: Impressionable (Session IPA), Printers Ink (dark roast black ale), Oktoberfest (Malty), and Sports Page Light (light German Style Lager). We then ordered dinner, where Lisa got a Sports Page Light, an Old Herald Burger, and fries served on a newsprint wax paper. I had the Citrus Pork Chop and mashed red potato. Our total bill plus tip was $52.12.
World’s Largest Catsup Bottle
On our way back to the campground, we pulled over to the side of the road near the World’s Largest Catsup Bottle just south of downtown Collinsville, IL. This unique 170 ft. tall water tower was built in 1949 by the W.E. Caldwell Company for the G.S. Suppiger catsup bottling plant – bottlers of Brooks old original rich & tangy catsup. Birds Eye Foods is still manufacturing Brooks brand ketchup in Canada.
In 1995, due to the efforts of the Catsup Bottle Preservation Group, this landmark roadside attraction was saved from demolition and beautifully restored to its original appearance.
Note that there is no difference between “ketchup” and “catsup.” It just boils down to a spelling preference of the company producing the product. The overwhelming success of Heinz and the fact that the US Food and Drug Administration spells it “ketchup” makes the “K” spelling far more common today. Even Brooks’s makers changed the name of their product from “catsup” to “ketchup.”
We got back to the campsite around 7 pm.
Thursday, Sept 15
Cahokia Mounds
We left the campsite around 9 am and headed to the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site. We took the back roads toward St Louis and drove through a lot of distressed areas on the way.
One out of every 2.3 residents of East St. Louis lives in poverty. The terrain on the Illinois side was much lower and, therefore, more prone to flooding and less desirable. It became a company town where the railroads, stockyards, and large low-margin companies built facilities. They often built just outside the East Saint Louis city limits so they did not have to pay taxes, but their workers lived within the city. Unlike Missouri, bars in East Saint Louis could stay open earlier and longer and be open on Sunday. It became a haven for vice and developed a reputation as an area where anything from prostitution to whatever the current generation called “the devil’s music,” be it jazz, blues, or rock’n’roll, thrived. The result is a city that was never meant to be anything but poor. Between 1960 and 1970, the city lost nearly 70 percent of its businesses. Unemployment soared. Residents moved out of town. The population drain continued for years. Between 1970 and 2000, the city lost 55 percent of its population.
The Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site is the site of a pre-Columbian Native American city that existed c. 1050–1350 CE. It covers about 3.5 square miles and contains about 80 manmade mounds. At its height, the city covered about 6 square miles and included about 120 earthworks in a wide range of sizes, shapes, and functions. Today, the Cahokia Mounds are considered the largest and most complex archeological site north of the great pre-Columbian cities in Mexico.
We parked in a parking lot near Monks Mound. Monks Mound is the largest man-made earthen mound north of Mexico. It has four terraces and is 100 ft high, 951 ft long, 836 ft wide, and covers 13.8 acres. Excavation has revealed that a large building that could have been 50 feet tall once stood on its top. Today, you can take concrete steps to the top, which gives a great look at the surrounding area and the St Louis skyline. Many people there were not tourists but people using the steps for exercise.
Near the parking lot was a reconstructed stockade or defensive wall surrounding the central ceremonial precinct.
Anheuser-Busch Factory Tour
After leaving the mounds, we headed through Saint Louis to the Anheuser-Busch Brewery Tour Center while avoiding highways. We had tickets for the 11 am Day Fresh Tour.
The Brewery Tour Center had a gift shop, some displays about topics like the brewery, the locations of Bud breweries across the country, and more.
We checked in at the reception desk and were directed to a waiting area, where we met our guide at 11 am. Several different types of tours began at the same time, but we all had different meeting places. Our guide gave us a quick overview of Anheuser-Busch and its history before our group of about 50 people headed into the A-B campus.
Our first stop was the stables for the Clydesdale Horses and Dalmatian Dogs. The guide used a hidden microphone to tell the group about the stables before taking us indoors. Outside, we saw one of the horses getting groomed next to its very small exercise area and one of the semi-trailers used to transport them. The inside of the stables was beautiful, with stained glass windows and a large chandelier in the middle. Static displays of historic delivery wagons and bridals hung on the walls.
When we walked outside, they took a souvenir picture next to a large “Bud” sign that we could buy at the end of our tour.
Next, we visited the Beechwood aging cellar, where the guide showed us the wood used during the filtering process. We stood next to enormous drums holding enough beer to provide 1.2 million servings. The thought of that much alcohol is overwhelming!
Then, it was off to another historic building where we were given a small plastic glass of either Bud or Bud Light and then given an introduction of the brewing process. We then went to another room where we saw the giant mash tanks.
Then we walked over to the bottling plant, where we took escalators about six floors up and saw the beers getting bottled from a viewing room. It was fun watching all the bottles going down the conveyor belt. As we left, we were given a Budweiser bottle brewed that day. Beer does NOT get better with age, so this was supposed to be as good as it got.
We then returned to the Tour Center to an outdoor bar where we were given two free beers. Most, but not all, of their beers were available. This was the official end of the tour.
We then went inside the large Biergarten, where we ate some lunch of Boneless Wings, Budweiser BBQ, Bevo Pork Sandwich, and Fries.
Our Lady of the Snows Shrine
When we left the brewery, we drove to the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows on the other side of the river in Belleville, Illinois. The Shrine’s name refers to the Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome, where legend says snow fell in the summertime.
It is one of the largest outdoor shrines in North America. It includes a restaurant, a hotel, an apartment complex for retired persons, a residence for the Oblates, a visitors and conference center, and a large gift shop. The Shrine includes a church, a natural outdoor amphitheater, Stations of the Cross, a Resurrection Garden, a depiction of the Lourdes Grotto, an Annunciation Garden, and Our Lady of Guadalupe Hill.
We first went to the conference center, where we watched a video about the shrine in a small information area in the lobby. We then drove by the church and past their Stations of the Cross. We then stopped at a parking lot near the amphitheater.
The amphitheater was large and could probably hold several thousand people between the benches and the grassy slopes. The stage, or Main Shrine, was covered with a shell with a 50-foot concrete “M” on the top, which we learned stood for Mary. The large stage facing the benches had an altar with a 16-foot fiberglass statue of Mary elevated behind it. We didn’t know there were two chapels and a Rosary Court inside the structure, so we did not go inside it. At the highest point in the back of the amphitheater was a Candelarium with an 85′ tall Millennium Spire rising out of it.
We then walked through their Agony Garden and Annunciation Garden, where we heard the Byzantine-turret-shaped bell chime at 3 pm.
We then drove down the hill to the Our Lady of Guadalupe Hill. A small walkway took us past Prickly Pear cacti and Orange trees to a small concrete passageway that led to a statue of the appearance of the Blessed Mother to Juan Diego.
We then drove over to the Lourdes Grotto. This is an exact reproduction scaled to two-thirds the size of the original Lourdes Grotto in France using poured concrete.
We then drove back to the campground and got to the camper around 6 pm.
Friday, Sept 16
We packed up, dumped, left the campground around 9:15, and headed home to Olathe, KS.