Train ride, Chicago to St. Louis, and general photos
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The new minor-league ballpark in Joliet, Illinois - just a stone's throw from the federal prison!

Ladies and gentlemen, central Illinois. Yecch.

The sprawling metropolis of Lincoln, Illinois, one of the endless stops Amtrak makes from Chicago to St. Louis.

Downtown Springfield, Illinois' state capitol.

The train station at Springfield.

Giant power lines, somewhere between Springfield and St. Louis.

Weird dome thing, purpose unknown, near a petroleum processing plant in East St. Louis.

Highway 40, spanning Missouri and Illinois near downtown St. Louis.

The mighty Mississippi River, trudging its way down to New Orleans and eventually into the Gulf of Mexico.

St. Louis! For those who are confused, St. Louis is known as the "gateway to the west," because of it being the starting point for most of the frontier families who eventually settled the western United States. That big arch thing (surprisingly enough called the Arch) is a huge monument the city built in the 1960s to symbolize this "gateway." The inside is hollow and you can ride a little cablecar to the top; the basement also has this incredibly cool Lewis and Clark museum, including original pages from Clark's journal and the first medallions created for American/Indian treaties. A little trivia for you - businesses in downtown St. Louis are forbidden by law from building skyscrapers taller than the Arch.

The beautiful and spacious St. Louis Amtrak station. Oh, did I say "beautiful and spacious?" I meant "shitty and smelly." The irony is that there's this huge, ornate, beautiful train station just steps from this grimy little depot; back in the 1980s, though, the city decided to stop using it for train travel and instead turn it into a big giant shopping mall. Oh, St. Louis, when will you ever learn?

And the beautiful view of St. Louis from the Amtrak station.

An accidentally cool self-portrait my brother took while playing around with my Treo.

Ah, St. Louis - land of the endless on-ramps. This particular shot is from the intersection of highways 170 and 70, making our way from the train station to St. Charles.

A typically breathtaking sunset we here in the midwest experience on a regular basis. Again, I'm constantly surprised by the sophisticated photos this little cellphone camera can sometimes capture.

Looking north from my parents' front porch in sleepy St. Charles. This is the neighborhood where I lived from the age of four to eighteen; there are a ton of childhood memories attached to every single object in this picture.

And the view from the opposite direction.

Union Station, 8 a.m. on Sunday, having some breakfast after finding out my train was running three hours late. (Amtrak running three hours late? Why, no, that can't be.)

My mom and dad, having breakfast with me. Dad was out of town most of the weekend on a teachers' retreat, but made it back in time to drive my ass down to the train station at 8:00 on a Sunday morning. Lucky him!

Various shots from the inside of Union Station, the aforementioned train station that St. Louis for some inexplicable reason decided to turn into a shopping mall.

Man, there really are not many things in life spookier than empty shopping malls. I always forget how much I take the crowds in malls for granted until accidentally going to one before most of the stores are open. No wonder Dawn of the Dead is such an eerily effective film.

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