Route 66 2015

Day 7: St. Louis (Missouri) – Springfield (Missouri)

We had a long drive today. First stop was Ted Drewes, where you can eat delicious frozen custard. Well, we heard it’s delicious, because it was still closed when we arrived early in the morning. 😉 Maybe a good thing. Frozen custard at 10am…

Once we left St. Louis we set course for the Meramec Caverns. The gps said we were there, but no cave… We stopped at a gas station and they told us we had to drive another 30km.. Back to the car and yes, a little further we saw a sign, directing us to the caves. Once we arrived we went to the entrance and saw it would be 21 dollars to look inside. We thought this was a little expensive so we only visited the shop and returned to the car to continue our drive to the Wagon Wheel Motel. This beautiful motel consists of many small houses in a nice landscape. We took some photos and drove to the next stop.

At the Totem Pole Trading Post the owner was curious where we were from. He asked us to sign the guestbook. We had a look in the guestbook and a lot of Belgians were here before us. The last stop we had planned was the Stony Dell Resort. This abandonned resort is a great photo-op. The houses are overtaken by plants. Time seems to have stopped around the main building.

They weren’t on our list: World’s Largest Gift Store and Candy Factory. But we stopped nonetheless. 😉 A little further we stopped at a Summer Fresh Market to buy discounted tickets for Silver Dollar City. We would visit the park the next day. 

It rained a lot during the last part of the trip, so we couldn’t drive very fast. Near the hotel we made a quick stop at Walmart to buy food for dinner.

We slept at a real Route 66 classic, Route 66 Rail Haven in Springfield. This motel is already 75 years old. Elvis has slept here, but apparently he had already left the building…

Day 8: Springfield (Missouri) – Branson (Missouri)

We slept at Route 66 Rail Haven, a classic, but we were disappointed. The motel is nice and clean, but the airco couldn’t keep the room cool and the bed was too small for 2. At 6.30am we were waked by thunder. A thunderstorm was passing over Springfield. Jelle even got a flood warning on his cellphone.

Breakfast was very good (what do you need more besides Belgian waffles!?). Today we would leave Route 66 and follow Route 65 toward the south. About an hour later we were on the parking lot of Silver Dollar City, a theme park.

Silver Dollar City was founded at the entrance to a cave that can already be visited since 1900. Highlight of the park is Outlaw Run, a wooden rollarcoaster that reaches 109km/h and is inverted 3 times.

Shorty after noon we had done all attractions we wanted, so we left te park and went to our hotel, Best Western Branson Inn, to check in. We rested a little and then drove to Branson Landing. This is a boulevard at a lake with shops and restaurants. In the middle of the boulevard there was a fountain show every hour. The show was created by the same people that created the Bellagio Fountains in Las Vegas. In the evening we had dinner in the White River Fish House, a restaurant on large floating structure. The food was delicious!