1000 miles down, 2000 miles to go...

We have made it about one third of the way, putting most of the highway mileage behind us.  Sunday we continued driving west to St. Louis, Missouri.  After checking into our motel, we went into the city. The Gateway Arch is the iconic monument of the city so of course we had to see that.

  You can go up to the top as well so we did that and had a fantastic view of the city from the top. Because it's 630 feet high, there's quite a bit of wind, enough for the arch to have an amplitude of 9 inches in either direction. You can feel it from the top too! The video in the Visitor Center center is fantastic as well, explaining the building process. No one died during the process even though they built the entire thing without being secured to any guard railings. Dinner was at a Peruvian restaurant that I had found on TripAdvisor and was delicious!

Our motel didn't have breakfast so we found a place along the road to eat instead. It was a place called Kolache Factory, which served rolls filled with various things, like bacon, sausage, egg, among other things.  They had a few dessert/sweet ones as well.

St. Louis is where we picked up the actual Route 66 so the rest of the day was spent riding down the road to Springfield, MO.  Route 66 actually goes parallel to I44, crossing it a few times and taking a few more curves through the woods.

Thankfully it had rained the night before so it cooled down quite a bit, making it a very pleasant ride. The Route passes many small towns as well, giving it the nickname “Main Street of America.” In the morning, we stopped at Meramec Caverns (Jesse James' hideout) which had been recommended to us.

We took a tour of the caverns, seeing stalactites and stalagmites in various formations.

Along the way were all sorts of weird things, like the World's Largest Rocking Chair, old bridges (some of which were closed), and old motels.

Lunch saw us at Missouri Hicks Bar-B-Q, a little restaurant with delicious food and cool decorations.


We eventually finished our 249 miles of the day, finally arriving at about 8 pm in Springfield, MO, the birthplace of Route 66.

Life lesson from the road: Don't unzip the first few inches of the sleeves and drive down the interstate without wearing a long-sleeve underneath. You'll end up with weird tan/near sunburn between where the gloves stop and before the jacket starts for real.