First stop today was Route 66 State Park. The park used to be a town but when the floodwaters rose ten feet up the walls of the buildings the town was abandoned. It now has lots of cool Route 66 stuff in its visitor center which itself was once the Bridgehead Inn. The Inn was above flood level so it was not damaged. The park is lovely but has no camping. No one wants to get flooded out again.
Next we went to Ted Drewes Frozen Custard stand to have a snack that would tide us over for awhile. The stand is an old-fashioned one where you walk up to the window along the sidewalk and talk to the clerk through a screen window. When your order is ready, they open the screen and pass you the food. When I was growing up in Decatur, Illinois, there was a frozen custard stand like that (only not nearly as big as this one) that would occasionally have lemon custard. Dad would take us there for a treat. So I was hoping to get lemon custard today. No such luck; I had to settle for one that came as close to German Chocolate Cake as a custard can come. Then we went into the RV to eat it since the custard stand has no dining area and it was starting to rain. When we drove by here a couple of days earlier the sun was out, the place was mobbed, and the park benches that line the sidewalk were full. I’m glad we came back at a quieter time.
After our snack we went to visit our friends Bob & Prue. We wanted to see what Bob had done with his Pseudo Soo model railroad when he moved it from Minneapolis to St Louis. It was fun catching up with the news of shared friends even though not all the news has been good. And it was fun seeing the railroad in it’s new home. It was somewhat disconcerting, though, to see familiar industries now located in different model towns than where they used to be. I would still enjoy working the paper mill job and Dave would like to work the yard. Ignoring the fact that I can no longer stand still long enough to operate, we could probably do that if we could stay a week. Friends from Minneapolis and elsewhere are coming to operate here next weekend. But, the leaves are changing color here now so we must keep moving.
While moving from place to place in St Louis we found ourselves on I-270. This is the only freeway we’ve ever seen that has variable speed limits. Their speed limit signs are light boxes that they can set to read whatever speed they want you to drive today. I wonder if that works?
Then we went to Spencer’s Grill for lunch. Except, we turned the wrong way on Kirkwood. Fortunately, lots of people apparently do that because they had specially designated U-turn lanes. So went turned the right way to go to Spencer’s. Except, we were too late. It turned out to be a place that only serves breakfast and lunch and they had closed for the day about an hour before we got there.
So, we went to I-HOP. Two of them actually since the first one was closed. But Dave had waffles on his mind so we kept driving until we got to the second one. At least, they were both on our route.
By now it was rather late in the day to head on down the road so we went back to Edmund Babler Memorial State Park for another good night’s rest. I really like Missouri State Parks.
TTYL,
Linda