LESLIE'S JOURNAL

We did, however, find a few places that were certainly worth getting to, one of which was Ted Drewe's Frozen Custard Stand. And we weren't the only ones. We thought it might be hard to find, but just as Helen said, 'I hope we see it...' we spotted scores of people swarming around a little white house with icicles hanging from the gingerbread roof and thought, 'this must be the place.' We watched all the folks happily eating their custard, bought some for ourselves which we ate sitting on the grass outside. It was easy to imagine how inviting that custard stand must have looked to weary travellers driving cross country with no air conditioning.

Later we tried to take the tram up to the top of the St. Louis arch, over 600ft above the ground. I feel a certain affinity with the arch, as it also just turned 30. Unfortunately we were 20 minutes late for the last tram, so the park ranger (oddly the inside of the arch is staffed by park rangers in full regalia) suggested that we take the virtual tour on the computer. There was something about actually being in the arch that made me feel it was wrong to be touring it virtually, but this trip is all about the way we interact with places, particularly in relation to technology, so I reckoned I might not score very high marks if I chose not to. The computer tour was an interactive touch automated one and was good enough that we have vowed to go back tomorrow morning and take the trip up into the arch for real.