Day 11 Route 66

I think I mentioned before that we like Missouri State Parks.  They have no admission fees, usually have electrical hookups for $16-$20 dollars, and their campsites are often shaded by trees.  They also have a checkout time of 2 p.m.  Which for us is a mixed blessing since we have so much trouble getting on the road in the morning anyway without having permission to stay so long.  Still we are picking Missouri State Parks for most of our overnights even when we have to drive a ways off our route to get to them.  It’s so easy to get tired of RV parks where you park too close to your neighbors in what is essentially a parking lot.

This section of Route 66 is also the I-44 freeway frontage road.  It is very well maintained.  Part of that is probably because, according to the signs, it is also the “Incident By-Pass Route.”  Apparently, they have enough accidents on the freeway here to have a marked route for detouring around them.  That makes me glad we are over here to start with.

We are seeing fewer colorful leaves today so we must be headed in the right direction.  

Cuba, Missouri is a town that understand the importance of Route 66.  They have been restoring buildings and many other town buildings have Route 66 murals painted on them.

 

One of the funniest sights I saw was a man walking a dog.  The dog got just far enough ahead of the man to walk around a post wrapping his leash around it.  When the man tried to follow the dog to unwrap the leash, the dog followed the man.  They went around a couple of times before the the leash finally came unwrapped.

In St James, Missouri, we stopped at a visitor center.  When you travel the 2-lane highways instead of the Interstates, you don’t get a visitor center every time you cross a state border.  This small town visitor center was an excellent place to stop.  They had current highway maps for most of the states we will be passing through.  What a bonus!

Also, in St James we saw a place that had three former tour buses for sale.  So, If any of your are looking to buy a bus to convert to an RV, here’s a place you might want to visit.

We stopped at a Subway for lunch and this vehicle pulled in.  The owner thanked me for wanting to take pictures of it.  Who wouldn’t?!

 

Then we drove though an area known as Devil’s Elbow.  It included a two lane road with a one lane bridge.  And a pullout with this fantastic view.

Lebanon, Missouri, is another place that appreciates its Route 66 history.  

    

We bought groceries at Winks Market and ate supper at the Bell Restaurant but we didn’t stay at the Munger Moss Motel.  They are open for business and are popular with Route 66 travelers but we went on to Bennet Springs State Park for another pleasant stay at a Missouri state park.

TTYL,

Linda

Day 10 Route 66

Leaving St Louis we tried to follow the Route 66 signs and my homemade maps.  We finally gave up and opened the turn by turn book I bought back in Chicago.  When we stated this journey I didn’t think we wanted to do it turn by turn.  I was wrong.  It’s actually easier to follow that route which automatically brings you to most of the things we want to see.  Plus, Dave has discovered that, for him, following the actual route is what it is all about.

Dave and I are not particularly interested in exploring caves.  Been there; done that; I can’t really do it anymore, anyway.  Yet we found ourselves turning at the road to Meramec Caverns.  I guess all that advertising on barns and billboards does work.  We didn’t tour the cave, though.  We just had lunch in their restaurant and shopped in their gift shop.  

For lunch I had a country fried steak sandwich.  I love country fried steak partly because I love gravy which I don’t eat often anymore so it is a real treat when I do.  However this was a steak on a bun–no gravy.  It was so tasty I didn’t even mind it not having gravy.

In the gift shop I bought a toothpick holder.  I have a gap in my teeth that nearly always manages to trap something at the end of a meal.  I frequently need to use a toothpick to get it out.  With this holder, I can store some toothpicks in my pocket without getting stabbed.  A very handy thing for me.

Driving along we passed other “typical” tourist sites.  A reptile museum with a trading post then a yard full of lawn ornaments for sale, for example.  I remember reading once about a woman who collected those lawn ornaments for years.  As a widow, she started selling them from her own yard to supplement her income.  Interesting retirement program.  Today she’d probably be selling them on eBay.

As we drove the hills of this part of Missouri, Dave commented, “Missouri sure has a lot of ups and downs.”  I’m glad our days are mostly ups.

TTYL,

Linda

Day 9 Route 66

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

Day 8 Route 66

Monday was a work day for me.  I use multiple sources for gathering information about what is, or was, along Route 66.  Some of my sources are books about Route 66, websites about Route 66, websites about towns along the route, various camping guides, my mapping software’s points-of-interest files, brochures I pick up here and there, and places we hear about from people we meet on the road.

The best way for me to then make sense of all that data is to put it in a spreadsheet where I can sort it various ways until I figure out what should come in what order.  Then I map that order to get an overall sense of what is where.

I used to print out those maps until we learned how unreliable they are.  Now we follow the turn by turn guide in one of my books along with a printout of my spreadsheet to tell us what to look for along those turns.

After hours of doing all that–just for the rest of Missouri–we took a break and cut my hair.  What?! Some of you are now yelling?  They cut her hair?!

Yup.  With barber clippers.  I have a #12 guide that goes on our Wahl Hair Clippers which keeps the clippers 1 1/2 inches from my head.  We run that every which way over my scalp until the hair stops falling.  Then Dave uses a barber scissors to trim around my ears and across the nape. At the end I look pretty well shorn but it sure makes it easy to take care of my hair until it grows too long to manage well then we do it again.

When that was done we decided we should drive up to the dump.  The grey water holding tank was getting full enough that I was afraid it would start backing up the shower drain when I was washing off all that loose hair.

Then we decide we had earned a treat so we went to the Big Chief Dakota Steakhouse for dinner.  This is another one of those Route 66 institutions that now goes my some other name but the neon sign is still there and the building feels authentic.  

 

And I have one of my favorite things–leftover steak!

TTYL,

Linda

Day 7 Route 66

Sunday was a do everything day.  Before we even left camp I took this picture.  Is this an Airstream pickup camper?

Then we crossed the bridge into Missouri, turned left, and headed back towards another bridge.  But you can no longer drive across Chain of Rocks Bridge.  This mile long bridge was declared, among other things, too narrow to accommodate today’s cars so it was turned into a pedestrian/bike bridge making it a perfect place to ride my Segway.  We didn’t go even halfway across yet we found lots of interesting things to see along the way.  Here’s some of them.

   

   

Then we drove into downtown St Louis to see the Scott Joplin House State Historic Site.  The fellow giving tours there really knew a lot and he could talk all afternoon about the things he knew.  Unfortunately, we couldn’t all listen all afternoon so two by two we slipped away.  But, before we left Dave got to play a little ragtime.

 

Then we drove the old route 66 route through the city seeing all the things you’d expect to see:  eateries, motels, bowling alleys, etc.  

    

 

We were too late for donuts but we ate lunch at Garavelli’s.  The bowling alley brought back memories of bowling with my Dad. He played in a league so I never came close to beating him but he taught me what little I know about bowling.

Finally, we moved into the campground at Edmund Babler Memorial State Park.  We were ready for a rest!

TTYL,

Linda