Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis

We started the day by attending mass at the cathedral, which is just two blocks from the hotel. When you look at this picture, keep in mind that none of the walls or ceilings are painted. They are all mosaics. They started the cathedral in 1907 and took 75 years building it. The amount of money they must have spent boggles my mind. Our mass had fewer than 30 attendees, in a space that must seat at least 2000.

Cahokia – Monks Mound

After that we circled back to Illinois to visit Cahokia, the largest city in North America (in pre-Colombian times). The museum for this place is phenomenal. What the archaeologists can figure out from some stained soil and a few scraps of wood or pottery is amazing. In this case, they had some help from the Spanish, who encountered Indian towns in what we call the Mississippi culture and gave eye-witness descriptions.  It was still very hot, but we had no problem spending over 2 hours in the museum. Cahokia had 10,000 to 20,000 people in 1100 AD. They built huge mounds. The one pictured here covered 14 acres. In a desperate attempt to make this sound as impressive as possible, the museum mentioned that Cahokia was the largest city north of Mexico. (That’s true, so far as we know.) They said Cahokia was larger than London. (Also true, but in 1100 London was nothing very impressive. It was a semi-civilized filthy backwater.) They said Cahokia was the largest city for 500 years. (That’s when Philadelphia finally got going. Once Philadelphia had 20,000 people, it grew rapidly. Also, Cahokia was totally abandoned long before Columbus arrived.) Still, it was a fascinating look at an advanced stone-age culture.

Cahokia Woodhenge

Afterwards, we found some shade for our picnic lunch. Then we drove across the street to visit Monks Mound. We looked earnestly at the steps leading to the top and admired the people who had the energy to climb them in the 95+ degree heat. We drove down the road a mile and visited “Woodhenge”. This was the Cahokia equivalent to England’s Stonehenge. They built a circle of poles, 24.7 feet apart and placed another pole in the center of the circle. They marked the three poles that marked the equinox and solstice position of the sun, when viewed from the center pole.

We went back to the room early because we were tired of too much vacationing, and because we wanted to change how we will spend our time in Colorado. Danita has a very interesting place picked out for dinner. After that, I have a feeling we might find ourselves back a Jeni’s Ice Cream. It really is the best we’ve ever had.