Cuba - Lebanon – Springfield MO

Still cloudy, rainy and cold (5c).  It is as if the northern weather is trying to chase after me!

We stayed at the Wagon Wheel Inn last night, a classic Route 66 cabin motel, recently re-opened after renovations.  It’s your basic bed, bathroom, shower & sink, all in about 100 sq ft.  Terry & Elfrida needed to be moved after the toilet cistern in the first room started spraying.  Mine was fine, except for the 1930’s style sound insulation (i.e. not a lot – the guy next door ate something that gave him gas.)

 (There are actually 8 units in the above pic; half open to the rear)

Cuba,  Missouri is named after the island, back when it was the site of a famous victory in the Spanish-American War.  It is now famous for its numerous nostalgic wall murals.  (I’ll bet every other town on Route 66 wishes they had thought of that first.  Several are now doing the same thing.)

 

 (Did you notice? The garage door is a mural of an older garage door.)

Just down the road, there is a 50-foot tall rocking chair.  Just to its left, is a bicycle with a push-mower for a front wheel.

Curiously, Missouri decided to apply letters to some of its state highways, rather than numbers.  So there are highways Y, Z MM, PP, AB, etc.  Combine that with fact that Bruce (our GPS with an Australian accent) insists on pronouncing Missouri as “misery” and the result is sometimes quite amusing.  

As we went westward, the hills became a little more pronounced and heavily wooded.  Devil’s Elbow is a river bend so named because of the frequent logjams it caused for loggers.  Near there, there is a section of the original route 66 that was made of concrete, a divided highway with two lanes in each direction, and expensively cut through tall rocky hills.  It is in such good shape that they have left both carriageways in use, even though it now services only a few hundred rural homes. 

We stopped at Lebanon and visited a Route 66 museum there.  I was fascinated by the old map, put together by the National Highway Association circa 1915 pitching a project to spend federal funds to build 100,000 miles of major roads, from coast to coast and Gulf to Lakes.  Around the edges were propaganda pieces trying to win readers over with any lever they could think of; war preparedness, economic development, Good Roads = Good Health = Good Morals, all the great jobs that would be created, how states, their budgets freed up from building major roads in their home state, could now spend that money extending state and county roads to more citizens, how to contact your congressman, etc.  One day I’ll get a copy of this map and compare it to the modern Interstate system, to see how much of it actually got built.

 (A Lebanon landmark.)

 

We ended the day in Springfield, MO.  The first few restaurants we tried were jam-packed with locals watching Game 1 of the World Series – the St. Louis Cardinals vs. Texas Rangers.  But we stumbled upon a unique American-Chinese restaurant – the staff were locals and the clientele Chinese!