Route 66 in Missouri
Today we traveled through Missouri. Tomorrow we will tell you about our day in St. Loius, Missouri.
Springfield to St Louis
Did you know that Springfield, Missouri is home to the original, and largest, Bass Pro Shop? Well, you do now! The building also houses an aquarium and conservation center. Of course we couldn’t pass up a stop there before we got on the road north and east.
Muffler Man
There is a food truck park in northern Springfield, and standing guard is the “chef” muffler man complete with BBQ tools. We stopped for some lunch and naturally, for Tony to take selfies with the Man.
Getting our Fudge Packed
We had several readers and listeners advice us to stop at the Uranus Fudge Factory. Well, how could we pass up such an opportunity? The employees are apparently required to have a 12-year-old’s sense of humor - Uranus jokes abound. Tony even helped them add to their repertoire.
Really, though, the fudge is delicious.
Muffler Man #2
Oh, what luck! We got to see two Muffler Men in one day!
The Mayor of Uranus has been erected as a Muffler Man holding his ball - advertising for the upcoming Putt Pirates mini golf that will open soon. I hope they plan for him to be gripping his putter in the other hand.
Also opening soon is One-Eyed Willie’s chicken shack. They don’t cluck around in Uranus.
The SECOND-Largest Rocking Chair
We stopped in Cuba, Missouri to take some photos with the second-largest rocker. For a long time it was the largest, approved by Guinness, but then the town of Casey, Illinois out-built them with a bigger chair. I don’t think that was very nice.
The service at Danny’s Gas Hole was super terrific. The young lady came out of the store into the heat to offer to take photos of us with the chair. Inside, we found a terrific selection of sodas - plus they make about 30 flavors of popcorn, which we could not resist!
Bourbon
We took shots - well, with the camera at least - of the water tower in Bourbon, Missouri.
Meramec State Park Campground
In our attempt not to log too many miles, we stopped about 70 miles short of St. Louis, at Meramec State Park in Sullivan, Missouri.
The campgrounds at Meramec State Park are really nice. They provide wifi, though like so many other campgrounds, it is pretty weak and often cause more frustration than not having any at all. The sites do have electricity, which is something we never experienced in California State Park campgrounds. We started at the water/dump station and filled our water tank before we settled into our site.
Meramec Caverns
Meramec Caverns in Stanton, Missouri is known as the Jesse James hideout. As the story goes, Jesse and his brother Frank were running from the law and entered the cave. Everyone thought they were trapped, but the boys heard water running so they jumped into the underground river and rode it out of the caverns to freedom.
The temperature in the cave is 60 degrees. All the time. Day, night, winter, and summer. The water is about 30 or 40 degrees, so that must have been a painfully cold escape for the James brothers.
The caverns themselves are massive and absolutely stunning. The river runs through the entire portion that is included in the tours. The tour includes the rarest and the largest cave formations in the world. Apparently, there are 16 miles more of caves that are not open to the public.
A note from the geology nerd: stalactites and stalagmites grow slowly, drip by drip of water that has been filtered through the rock. As the water evaporates, the calcium builds up. Stalactites grow from the ceiling of the caves. The way I learned is they ”hold tight.” Stalagmites grow up from the floor, and they “might” have been stalactites, if they had held tight.
