24 Hours from Tulsa

Gene Pitney is the inspiration for today’s drive as last night we were 24 Hours from Tulsa. Though we could equally talk about ‘Getting our kicks on route 66’ as the ‘Mother Road’ also played a big part in today’s fun journey.

Breakfast

We began the day with our first Holiday Inn Express breakfast, they have clearly upped their game since we last stayed in one four years ago.

The range of food was excellent and each item had a little sign saying what it was, much like University of South Wales buffets!

One of the items was called Turkey Sausage, a concept with which I am not familiar. Actually it was a meat patty which I would have called a sausage patty, so I may have been eating these without knowing for a long time!

I had turkey sausage, bacon, it was lovely and crisp, scrambled eggs and biscuit, which I think I have mentioned before, it is a scone shaped salty bread. As ever I had orange juice and coffee. I then went back for two more biscuits.

Drew had the same as I, but added to that with a strawberry muffin and an apple muffin. 

Out of St Louis

The route for the day is a simple one, leave St Louis and point towards Tulsa on the I44 and click cruise control. In practise it was much more complex as we took regular detours to follow Route 66, which at various points deviates its route from simply being a frontage road to the I44. See the route below, but note that it defaults to the Interstate when in a number of cases we stayed on Route 66 not back on the Interstate:

Two turns from the hotel and we hit the I44 for the start of the journey, we continue through the St Louis suburbs until exit 266 to the Route 66 State Park. 

Getting our kicks on Route 66

The State Park is a great example of what happens to Route 66 now it is no longer a major road, but only a tourist attraction. The road was decaying above the Meramec river, so instead of repairing it, it is closed. Drew got some great photos of the bridge that was and isn't now and the loneliness of this once great road.

The State Park has a fascinating history, this courtesy of Road Trip USA, a great guide to the US Road Trip:

There’s no plaque or notice proudly marking the spot, but the story of Times Beach (pop. 0) deserves mention. Founded in the 1920s as a weekend getaway a dozen miles west of St. Louis along the Meramec River, the town grew into a working-class commuter suburb, with some 2,000 people, thanks to Route 66. But there were no paved streets except for the not-yet-famous highway that passed through the center of town. Times Beach remained a quiet hamlet until 1982, when the federal government discovered that the industrial oil sprayed on streets to keep down dust had in fact been contaminated with toxic dioxin. The toxic waste, combined with a Meramec River flood that buried the town for over a week, made Times Beach uninhabitable.
 In 1984 the government paid $33 million to buy Times Beach and tear it down, and 15 years later the cleanup was declared complete. Four hundred acres of what was once Times Beach have since been reopened as the Route 66 State Park... - Source: Road Trip USA - Times Beach 

We next took exit 261 for Eureka and the Six Flags Park and followed Route 66 through a pretty town called Pacific and up into Gray Summit. Unlike the interstate Route 66 tended to follow the contours of the land, so it dips and climbs as you follow it.

Back on the Interstate we pass all the advertisements for Meramec Caverns, they were very funny and you can see some more on Flickr. The area around Stanton is also home to the Jesse James Wax Museum and the Antique Toy Museum; we stayed on the I44!

At exit 208 we pulled of the I44 back onto Route 66 through Cuba, a small town that calls itself the City of Murals, as it has a number of murals on the side of its buildings.

As well as taking photos of the murals we stopped for a coffee in Cuba.

Four miles out of Cuba we came to the town of Fanning, home to the largest Rocking Chair in the world – according to the Guinness Book of Records no less!!

We continued on Route 66 to Rolla, this was a lovely drive through the Ozarks and the road rolled up and down and around the bends in response to the shape of the hills.

Rolla's claim to fame is a little unusual, I spent 20 minutes laughing about it when I first read about it. Rolla has a scale model of Stonehenge!! While I laugh some more let Road Trip USA explain:

In the center of town, right along old Route 66 on the campus of the Missouri University of Science and Technology (MUST), one big draw is the half-scale replica of that ancient Druidical observatory, Stonehenge, created in 1984 to show off the high-tech stone carving capabilities of MUST’s High Pressure Water Jet Lab. If you have trouble finding Rolla’s Stonehenge, this miniature Wonder of the World stands across Route 66 from the Great Wall (1505 N. Bishop Ave.), a pretty good Chinese restaurant. Talk about “small world.” - Source: Road Trip USA - Rolla

Leaving Rolla we headed back on to the Interstate and for our next Route 66 treat went to the Route 66 Museum, Lebanon, MO hosted in the Lebanon-Laclede County Library. This was a lovely Museum, no hard-sell, indeed no cost to enter, which made me even more generous at the donations box at the exit than I might have been otherwise. The items were all collected locally and tell a specific story of the links between Route 66 and Lebanon, MO. In particular the trial route through Lebanon that pre-empted the Route 66 developments. Of all the Route 66 places we visited this this was the one that helped explained the way the road got into the heart of the American People and became a simple of hope and new beginnings. If you are ever in these parts it is worth the effort to get off the interstate. 

We were going to go to downtown Lebanon for food, but given the high traffic due to two huge wide-load vehicles coming in the Lebanon, parts for a Wind Turbine, the traffic was snarled up, so we went to a chain restaurant, called Long John Silvers. As you can imagine it specialised in fish, but also did chicken. So Drew opted for their Fish and Shrimps which came with Hush Puppies and a choice of two sides, Drew had rice and coleslaw. I went for the Chicken which also came with Hush Puppies, I chose Okra and Corn as my sides. 

Leaving Lebanon at 1.45 we travelled down to Springfield, MO and took exit 58 for Halltown. Here Route 66 starts to diverge from I44 by a great deal. The route runs from Halltown through Avilla, Carthage and into Joplin.

From Joplin Route 66 travels from Missouri into Kansas, our 10th state of the holiday, but not a new one to either of us, I having been here in 2000 (on this route) and both of us having travelled North through the state during our last holiday here in 2013.


Baxter Springs in Kansas, is one of the towns which really shows the collapse that the end of Route 66 as a main route can bring to a location. there are signs everyone of lots of old business and august premises, but now hardly anything at all survives, and most buildings are closed down and empty.

We travelled next through three Indian Reservations (or Tribal Lands as they are now called), those of the Quapaw, Shawnee and Comanche and across the Oklahoma stateline, the first town is Miami, interesting that the original Miami in Ohio is on Quapaw land, so the name seems to have come with the Quapaw's when they were removed to Oklahoma. Miami, Florida is named for the same reason, but by a European who moved from the Ohio location to Florida. 

We left Route 66 and got back on the I44, here called the Will Rogers Turnpike and came across the Will Rogers Archway this was formally the largest McDonald's in the World. All this fuss is about a cross-interstate bridge linking services on either side, something very common in the UK, but very rare, and never see before when this one was built in 1957.

No longer 24 hours from, we are in Tulsa

From the Will Rogers Archway we travelled in to Tulsa at 6.20 and found the Comfort Inn we are staying at tonight.

Unlike previous days our night in Tulsa, and indeed Amarillo tomorrow, is about the journey not the stop. We had to pick somewhere on Route 66 to stay and Tulsa and Amarillo are famous for there songs, so we had not better reason for choosing them than that. So we didn't visit anywhere in Tulsa other than going to Mazzio's Italian Eatery for dinner

Two days ago I mentioned to Drew how odd it was that we had been in the States for a week and a bit and had not had Italian food, well rectifying that yesterday meant that it was typical that the best option locally today was also Italian, such is life :-)

Drew had a salad with blue cheese and I had a lovely cheese dip, this was cheese on a pizza base with a ranch sauce to dip the cheese in, easy to eat and very tasty.

For mains Drew had a Pizza of exactly the same mix as last night. I opted for a ham, bacon and cheese Calzone and it was delicious, crisp skin and soft oozing cheese across the meat. I would definitely try this again if Mazzio's wasn't a local brand.

We were in bed by 10 and soon asleep.