Visiting St Louis

Or, what do you do for photos when you don't have a garden gnome available...

This in from Q via email..

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I blame it all on Sir Edmund Hillary…

So we got off to a late start (Friday) and went to meet Eric and Scott in St Louis … Then we drove about looking for a place to park .. we found it too… Down on the river side of the St Louis “gateway” arch there are these great steps leading down to the river …..

It was there, we were there, how was I to know that they would be so perturbed.. Carlane said “What are they going to do, tell us to move?“

So up we went … I backed the 88 up a few steps, set brake, took pictures,

crossed road took more, Came back to the truck, changed lens, took more pictures, got back in the truck, drove off the steps, across the side walk and was proceeding to depart when a red faced and angry park ranger runs down the hill and starts yelling for us to “STOP THE TRUCK“

Things started going down hill from there ….

They pulled me out of the truck handcuffed and searched me, called in
reinforcements…

There were about 10 rangers, they poked and prodded the truck, They searched and looked in the truck… They never opened the hood tho…. They took pictures, made measurements of the track and wheelbase … Took pictures of the tires, all four of them .. What were they thinking?? That I was a serial backer up the steps at national monuments??!!! Honest officer we were just parking here on top of Mt Rushmore for a moment……

Bother.

Well they held me in cuffs for and hour and a half .. No you can’t stand
up… No you cant have a hat ….

They called the drug sniffing dog, a very pretty dog btw, I was starting to worry a trifle by this time.. Mind you I had not been arrested or mirandized…

They took all the gas receipts, the printed out map quest directions and all the other paper work away and Xeroxed it …

A police van showed up ,,, I was waiting for the rollback …

Then someone with sense arrived… She decided we were probably NOT terrorists … Idiots perhaps but not terrorists… So we got to move around and not be treated as dangerous.

She wanted to know what we were thinking … I told her we were driving across the country and it was like taking a garden gnome on vacation… Pictures in unlikely places. Well we didn’t have a gnome but we DID have a Land Rover.. J

Of course by that time the FBI had been called…

So we all had to stand around waiting for them.

The Chief Ranger said the FBI had wanted to impound the truck, confiscate the computer, the phones, the cameras, damn near anything .. She didn’t think that was necessary so they didn’t do it..

The rangers let us look through and tidy up the truck. The only thing I found missing was my pocket knife :-(

The FBI really DO wear those dark suits in the hot sun… Amazing.

The FBI agent refused to shake my hand, officious prick…

So I got charged with

Driving off the marked road….. Seams reasonable enough ..

And perhaps more seriously, misdemeanor disorderly conduct that I MAY have to show up to deal with…. I dont know about the disorderly part, I thought all in I was pretty orderly...

All in all a fun day …

Rgds Q

Ps The pictures are on the bottom of the new index page , I am thinking poster sized ... ..