HELEN'S JOURNAL

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Date: 7th May
Time:Quiet afternoon Place:The Old Route 66

Sitting on the grassy road side, my legs stretched out onto an overgrown fragment of the original old road itself. It lies quiet and empty, a narrow path between the grassy verges that blur its edges. Moss grows out from the cracks that split through the road in many jagged directions. I can hear the cars on the main road in the distance, but here the only noise is the birds singing and the crackle of old leaves blowing down the road.

Earlier on today my surroundings could not have been more different. This morning I could be found climbing into cabin number 8, one of the spaceship like, round, white capsules of the tram that runs up the inside of the Arch in St Louis. I fought back waves of claustrophobia as the tiny cabin clicked it's way 600 feet upwards in the body of the silver arc. The view from the top, with the city of St Louis on one side and the Mississippi glistening below on the other was great, but the most amazing thing was the knowledge of exactly where I was, peering out of the small rectangles of windows in the carpeted interior of the huge silver curve in the sky.

A car just went by, causing a cloud of dust to rise from the road and me to pull my legs in sharpish. So Illinois at last - our last state. Leslie has brought the 'moqui marble' from Crater City Arizona out with her and it lies on the road beside her as she to writes her journal. Although at 130+ million years, the marble is infinitely older than the road, they meet each other well. I roll the stone gently along the roadside and it does indeed make a good marble today, as it did for Anasazi children thousands of years ago.

This stolen moment on the road, this piece of history feels wonderful and contrasts with another stolen moment we experienced earlier. Our digital camera was nicked as I left the arch, so we can't show you this beautiful spot - only try and describe it.


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