Route 66: St Louis to Cuba

We first drove to Times Beach visitors centre and Meramec River Bridge. There is an interesting story – Times Beach newspaper sold land in this area in 1925 to develop a community of holiday houses (people could buy land for just $67.50 with a 6 month subscription). It ended up a terrible misadventure – in 1972-73 they hired somebody to spray the dirt streets with oil to control the dust. The oil was unfortunately contaminated with dioxin – which was not a problem for 10 years. But in 1982 it rained heavily and Meramec River flooded, contaminating all the houses etc. with dioxin and making animals and then people sick. Everything had to be removed (and burned). The last structures were destroyed in 1992. Only the skeleton of the bridge still remains today and one wouldn’t even know all that happened there, the old community grounds have been turned into beautiful woodland called Route 66 State Park. The Visitors Centre houses quite an interesting museum about this community, as well as Campbell’s 66 express, a trucking company operating between Springfield and St Louis with a camel as mascot and motto “Humpin to please”.

From the visitors centre we drove down to the state park (Route 66 State Park) that has now replaced the resort – there are walking and biking trails, the whole atmosphere is very nice, peaceful road with trees hanging low. Apparently they are planning to rebuild the bridge for the 100 yr celebrations in 2026.

We drove through Pacific, a small community with some nice sandstone bluffs next to the road

and arrived at Meramec Caverns. It is an interesting place with lots of activities around (e.g. canoe, zip line). It started life as a saltpetre cave that they used to make explosives. Lassie’s adventures (or rescues) happened in this area and it was also used by the American Robin Hood called Jesse James. The cave itself is very nice and has some interesting formations in shape of grapes and “wine table” but it is kitschy in places. It got us to appreciate Australia more and its quest to maintain natural habitats (the caverns had coloured lights, some parts of the wall were painted, there was moss in front of halogen lights). And to top it up in the last large room they played a God Bless America video clip with the video projected on the cave walls.

We continued through the countryside – beautiful drive again. We started noticing some buildings using giraffe stone and many shops had fireworks for sale since we were getting close to the 4^th of July. We stopped at the big rocking chair in Fanning where they had a nice souvenir shop selling tens of types of root beer (managed to find some diet one too) and other interesting edibles.

In Cuba we stayed at the Wagon Wheel motel and had dinner at the Missouri Hick BBQ eatery next door (did not go for the “all you can eat catfish” and chose a beautiful beef brisket instead). After dinner we went for a walk around the town where they have some beautiful murals.

A short video with some highlights from this day’s drive is available here.