Stuart Day 14

Gateway Arch

Chain of Rocks Bridge

The rowdy Australians!

Lincoln's Tomb

An early start from Pacific and straight onto the Mother Road. We were soon in the Visitors' Centre for the R66 State Park (63025), which is just a convenient name for a park, but it does have an excellent R66 Museum. Then, into the outskirts of St Louis, which surprisingly has a population of well under 400,00. Lovely city centre but grim apart from that. The city centre is surrounded for miles by completely derelict buildings, quite literally every one is abandoned and boarded up. That said, the Gateway Arch is most impressive (63102), as is the Court House in the centre of town. Getting out of the city centre was challenging but we made it and succeeded in finding our next stop, the Chain of Rocks Bridge (62040), which carried R66 over the Mississippi, which is a mile wide at this point and denotes the state line between Missouri and Illinois. The bridge was a cause of endless accidents, as it has a 24 deg bend in the middle. Our next stop was Litchfield (62056), and lunch at the Ariston Restaurant, another well-known R66 roadhouse. The food was good and the staff charming - we had to sign their guest book and another book of photos that they got everyone from abroad to sign. Another rowdy bunch of elderly Aussies (from Ballarat in Victoria) arrived and we had some good banter with them. On to Springfield (62703), the state capital of Illinois and the childhood home and burial place of Abraham Lincoln. We got to the family grave 5 mins after it closed but were able to see the monument. Everyone has been raving about the new Lincoln Museum in the town, so we'll be going there in the morning. Springfield is a most pleasant place and we are in the Hampton Inn, my favourite chain hotel in the States and our first stay  in one on this trip. Our last hotel stop on our journey and onto Chicago tomorrow.