After a great nights rest and a fine breakfast we set off again with Mumsie and Jasmin deciding that after reading all the Route 66 guide books and maps, that they would do some navigation!
Well, all went well for the first HALF HOUR!!!!!!
Then quite suddenly we found ourselves on a one lane, luckily sealed, road in the middle of a guy's ranch, surrounded by soy beans and corn, with both the girls denying all responsibility!!!!
I'll bet the maps were upside down!
Anyway after much laughter and smartarse comments from the males, we resorted to the GPS to get us back on the freeway and onto St Louis.
We wanted to see the huge Gateway Arch in St Louis and so we wound our way through the over passes and under passes and found some parking right on the banks of the Mississippi River, parking on the old bricks that were tie up points for the many hundreds of paddle steamers that plied the river back in the 1800's.
The Arch was quite amazing to see - about 200 metres tall and with the legs the same width apart - built to honour the building of the first bridge across the Mississippi in St Louis which provided a gateway to opening up the western plains of America.
There are little tramways climbing up each leg inside the arch and so Greg and I got tickets and ascended up to the top while the girls checked out the great museum.
There were a few small windows at the top which gave a great view to the West to the city which is in Missouri and East out over the river to Illinois.
We took some photos and then it was back on the road and onto the Meremac Caverns, which are a huge cave network deep underground that apparently Jesse James the outlaw used as shelter because they were so big he could run all his men and horses inside!
There is in fact a nuclear bomb shelter built in one of the caverns! The tour was over an hour long, so we gave it a miss and pressed on and once again the female navigators let the team down! We had been driving along a small service road not far from the Interstate when Mumsie remarked that we hadn't seen a Route 66 sign post for ages, so Greg had a look at the map and we were actually on the wrong side of the Interstate!!!!
I'll say no more!!!!!
We stopped at a few little places along the way, but we are all disappointed in the so called "highlights" of Route 66! Mostly they are old servos or motels with broken signs etc and maybe a shop selling junk momentos!
Over dinner at our stop in Springfield - yep that's Simpson country - we all agreed that we might take a few detours along the way and visit some other landmarks instead of sticking rigidly to the route!