Stu: St Louis and Route 66

St Louis and Route 66
Jun 14, 2008

Started early today. I was out the door and on the road before 8:00. I went to a local eatery named the Hen House. It was the one with all the pickup trucks in front of it. Not many tourists there. They don’t vacation on PU trucks. Anyway, my favorite eateries are the one where the locals eat. Staff tends to be friendly, food is good and I enjoy hear the local goings on.

I was on my way to find the point where Rt66 comes across the Mississippi river. 80 some miles later I found the “Chain of Rocks Bridge” Access was better from the Illinois side so over the I70 Bridge I went. The old bridge is restricted to hikers and bicycles. It was quite a site to see, very narrow and well worn. The most exciting part was to see the swollen Mississippi. One of the locals said it was 40 feet higher than normal. The news said it would not crest until later this week. I’m glad I’m leaving.

The rest of Rt 66 through St Louis was next to impossible to find, so I opted to go to the Arch and the Anheuser-Busch brewery. I had lunch at one of the micro-brews on the Riverview area. Beer was great; the Quesadia was mediocre and not very hot. After that I searched for Rt 66 as it came out of St Louis and ended up at Ted Drewes Frozen custard. The place was packed. The lines almost fell out into the street. I had a Brownie concrete, ground up brownie with vanilla custard. One of the locals said that all the help gets their college paid for as long as they work there. Quite amazing.

The road was easier to find from this point on. Although, the signage is confusing and sometimes non-existent. Rt66 is no longer a US highway, much of the designation and signage is secondary to the official highways. You can’t find it on a map and most GPS units are of little help. So with the help of some print-outs from the internet, I was able to navigate the remainder back to camp. At times I had to ride the Interstate because the Road had been covered over. Check out the pictures of some of the many landmarks I came across.

Tomorrow may well be a day of rest. I logged about 300 miles on the bike and some of that was in the city (ugh).

Stu