Route 66: Springfield to St Louis

We came across a section around Auburn where the old road structure of red bricks is still visible, making one wonder at the amount of time and effort spent to build miles and miles of road. We drove through corn country today – green around us as far as the eyes could see, some fields being barley and soy too. The roads were not of the best quality, but, although we saw them used, the old route 66 that we drove is probably not the main thoroughfare anymore. The original concrete that is still visible in places dates back to 1920s, and was laid eight inches thick as part of Illinois Route 4, which later on became part of Mother Road.

The first stop was to see some small marks in the road – the turkey tracks near Girard, a reminder of times when wild turkeys still roamed free here and stepped onto the newly laid wet concrete.

In Girard we saw a diner advertising soda shakes and ice-cream served in a building that used to be a pharmacy

and in Carlinville The “Million Dollar” Courthouse (the recurrent theme being that these buildings seem to be the biggest in many small towns) and Macoupin county jail.

We drove past the Shell Servo in Mt Olive – another non-functional photo opportunity specialising in old Shell pumps – then Henry’s Rabbit Ranch, another old gas station where they have a couple or real life rabbits as well as VWs Golf (which the Americans call rabbits).

We saw lots of school buses on the way – mostly off duty.

Just before leaving Illinois we started seeing oil pump jacks bobbing up and down.

A highlight for the day was definitely the Chain of Rocks Bridge that we reached from the Illinois end (the guidebook advises that the Missouri end is quite unsafe and there’s often thefts). I was impressed with the size of the Mississippi River and overwhelmed with emotion, as I had never thought when I was a child, reading about the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, that one day I would actually be in this part of the world and see the mighty river with my own eyes. The bridge got its name from the fact that it has a 22 degree bend in the middle to follow rocks that are on the river bed used to anchor its footings. It also means that river traffic uses a man-made canal and lock system as the bedrock can be quite shallow at times.

After crossing the state line into Missouri we soon reached St Louis. The first neighbourhood that we drove through was not very appealing. The bridges that are still in use are definitely impressive (we crossed both McKinley Bridge and Martin Luther King Bridge) and so is the Gateway Arch. The Arch doesn’t look like very much from afar but what an experience it was! The Arch was built in 1965 to commemorate the western growth of USA and the build was a technological feat in itself – nicely explained in a movie.

We had a gigantic pretzel for lunch

watched the movie before getting into the tram to take us up to the viewing platform which indeed gave impressive panoramic views over the area around St Louis.

The museum that we visited after coming back down was very interesting as well, and the park around the arch very peaceful with all the squirrels running around.

The accommodation for the night was in the nicer part of town called Delmar Loop. The hotel is called Moonrise and we got to meet the owner who apparently owns most of that street – Joe Edwards. We met him in one of his restaurants (Blueberry Hill) further down the same street where we had dinner, and he told us about his latest development plans to add a bowling venue. The restaurant was very interesting, displaying lots of photos of this guy with various VIPs, his links with and support for Chuck Berry, as well as his various collections (he became an official hoarder aka collector at the age of 10!).

After dinner we walked back along Delmar Loop (along some nice street art and CBD shops) to Moonrise hotel where we went to the rooftop to enjoy some drinks while watching the sunset and the moon rotating in neon light.

A video with sights from this day’s driving can be seen here.

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