Apropos of nothing, here are some photographs.

Long straight roads on deceptive blue-sky sunny day (with bitter cold and frosty winds outside), we raced an Amtrak for a while. And out-ran it. But there's something magical about shiny steel train against flat, bland countryside.















The bridge on the mighty river Missouri. Perhaps it's the wrong season, or the wrong place, but it didn't seem that mighty. I've always been fascinated by bridges, though, so this picture is really my favourite from the whole trip.















Blue skies, bay and mud-brown earth. Coffee and music as we speed by. Heaven in a package. Not much of a picture, but go with it, go with it.















The St. Louis gateway arch, designed by Eero Saarinen and completed in 1965, towers 630 feet above the Mississippi river, commemorating America's westward exploration in the 19th century. Taller than the Washington Monument and more than twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty, even the giants from Mount Rushmore, had they bodies proportionate to the sie of their heads would be able to stroll through the arch.
The romance of the arch, however, lies in the idea of pioneering expeditions to the west, in intrepid explorers in boats and on horseback, crossing the river to go where no man they knew had gone before.
The Arch refused to fit into a single frame, no matter how we tried. Here's how it looks from below.















I had thought the view from the top would be something spectacular. It wasn't, in the normal sense of things. But for the first time, I could see the curvature of the earth. I checked this photograph with a ruler, just to be sure I wasn't imagining it. Yes, you can really see the curve.








Photographs courtesey R.