Springfield, Missouri to St. Louis, Misouri (Sun. Aug.1)

This morning's first stop was a bit unusual. Gary, from the Sinclair Station yesterday, told us to be sure to stop at a particular rest stop on the highway. It is a new stop in honor of Route 66. They have one going both ways. The rest stop is on the interstate, not on Route 66. Hopefully they will work in attracting more attention and more money to the Route to help save those businesses that are still operating. This was the coolest rest stop. They actually built shelters over each picnic table with each one designed like something you would see on 66.

We then continued down the road seeing many of the typical things we have come to expect on Route 66. If we are unsure if we are still on the right road we can usually figure it out pretty quickly by a couple of things. The roads basically come two ways. Either it is running right along the interstate with usually a similar road running on the other side. Or it is so far out there all by itself that you see nothing else. No matter which road you have it is very normal to have train tracks running along the side or very close to it.
Next you can pick out the road by watching for old, shut down hotels, restaurants, gas stations. . . , narrow bridges and really nice murals. If you are really lucky you are in a town that is excited about being part of Route 66 because then you will get more frequent Route 66 signs either official metal signs or banners on the phone poles. All the signs you are headed in the right direction.

Luckily for Route 66 the growing interest is starting to help. One business just recently reopened. Back to Cars again, if you watch that movie there is an old abandoned motel up the hill overlooking the interstate and at the end of the movie Lightning McQueen opens it back up. That hotel is based on a real motel called the Wagon Wheel. Well a few weeks ago the Wagon Wheel reopened and it is beautiful. We only looked from the outside but people on our e-mail group says it is really nice. The boys wanted to stay there but we really needed to get much further down the road.

By the end of the day we made it to St. Louis. (though we actually are camping across the river in Illinois.) First stop in the city was to Ted Drewes for ice cream. Everyone know Ted Drewes, on Route 66 for 75 years. We had been forewarned that we should not let the lines scare us away because there would be plenty of workers to keep the lines moving. It was a good thing they warned us because I think we would have driven away when we saw the crowd. But as we had been told there were more than enough workers and they actually got to us before we decided what we wanted.

From Ted Drewes it was off to the river to take a look at the famous arch in St. Louis. I had read about some flooding in the area but had not really given it much thought. We were surprised when we got close to the river and couldn't go down one street. The flood was receding but it was still bad enough that all parking along the river (the place those of us with campers need to park) was all under water. The water was up and over the sidewalks in most places and there were streets blocked off. Everyone was parking in illegal places along the road because there was no where to go. We joined them in one of those illegal spots so we could go see about getting up in the arch. But when we got to the arch there were no more tickets for the day. So we bought some for the morning and left. Just as well as the area right outside the arch is a bit rough looking and we were a little nervous about leaving the car and camper where we did. We were glad to move it before it got too dark. Tomorrow we will leave the camper at the campground until we have finished in the city and then we can collect it and move on. Without a camper we can get into a parking garage that is not flooded.