Day 3: Another long and cold day! Drizzly too, most of the day. We Left the hotel at 9am and took a quick trip to the Gateway Arch. There were a lot of road works and renovations going on and finding our way to and back from the Arch was extremely hard going, not to say frustrating, as we went round in circles a number of times! We found it quite hard going today because Route 66 is not as well signposted and is not as continuous in Missouri as it is in Illinois. We kept finding ourselves going up dead ends or just running out of paved road. We eventually found our way to the "Largest Rocking Chair in the World" at Fanning, Mo, and found on sale the "EZ 66 Guide for Travellers", which is an excellent guide to the route and saved a lot of time and frustration! We could have done with having it right from the start - highly recommended!
About an hour out from St Louis we stopped in at Bourbeuse Valley H-D, where we received a very warm welcome and had the tyre pressures checked and the suspension pumped up. I had been worried about the weight on the bike and the fact that we kept bottoming out on bumps. It turned out I was right to do so, because the suspension had been set up for a solo rider, so it was no wonder we were bottoming out! What a difference that has made to the ride!
We found a great bar at Devils Elbow, very reminiscent of the Desert Bar in Seeley. We took some video of the "loop" along old 66 over the Devils Elbow bridge, but, although you can see it, because of the drizzle on the windshield it doesn't make good viewing. We had a drink and a bite to eat and pinned a signed dollar bill to the ceiling! No "Bat Out of Hell" impressions, though!
We finally made it to Springfield, Mo, at about 6.45pm. By this time, though, we were very cold and were just looking forward to a hot bath. We stayed in a Candlewood Suites which was excellent - like having a small apartment to ourselves!
Day 4: Excellent day! We managed to stick to Route 66 all day without getting lost! We covered 3 States today - Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma! After our fat boy's breakfast at Steak and Shake, we stopped at Gary Turner's Service Station and had a chat with the old boy and his wife, then later on stopped for a coke in Shirley's Bar in Carterville (which must be the US equivalent of Carterton!). Met some friendly guys in there including "Indian Mike" who "just loved our accents"! We got to Tulsa about 5.30, checked in and then had a Panda Express for dinner - yum! The weather was much warmer and sunnier today, thank goodness. We saw tons of great places and old 66 "stuff" - much of which consists of closed down and run down motels, bars, gas stations and even towns, which is a great shame. However, there are also plenty of lovely mid-west towns, straight out of the movies! We took lots of great photos today but sadly, when it came to downloading them from the camera they had all disappeared! Bizarrely, only the photos taken since we arrived in the USA have disappeared - all the photos on the card from earlier on in the year are still there. Fortunately I only lost today's photos as I have been downloading them each day on to the iPad, but still very disappointing.
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