3rd August 2000

We had breakfast in Waffle House, ham and waffle for me, bacon and waffle for Debbie. For once, it left us with room for lunch. We skipped a lot of Route 66 in St. Louis, since we couldn't face the weekday traffic into the city, and rejoined the old road on the ouskirts.

Heading West out of St. Louis, the difference between Western Illinois and Eastern Missouri is striking. Illinois is flat, with cornfields stretching out as far as the eye can see. Missouri looks like Wales: rolling hills, lots of trees.

What Wales doesn't have is billboards for Meramec Caverns. We must have been reminded to go there at least thirty times, so when we got to Stanton, we were eager to put a stop to the anticipation.

Meramec Caverns is a showcave with three claims to fame:

• It has some nice rock formations
• Jesse James' gang once used it as a hideout, and eventually escaped by making use of a sump which nobody else discovered until 1935
• It's the archetypal Route 66 tourist attraction, since it was running all through the route's heyday, and had roadside ads as far back as Chicago.

It's a good set of caves, although like most showcaves, you can't help feeling they've hacked up a lot of valuable stuff to put in concrete floors and so forth.

We had lunch in their cafe, where I cleverly shook up a bottle of mustard which some moron had failed to screw the top onto properly. Nobody got splashed, but Debbie insisted on taking a photgraph of the ensuing stainage:

Meramec Caverns is indeed a historic site: their little arcade had a Gyruss and a Ms Pacman, so I put a quarter in each.

Yes, mum: this is interesting stuff.

Heading West, we passed Route 66 Motors, a souvenir shop (the usual trinkets, plus some maps from the 70s and some authentic old road signs, traffic lights etc.) and used car dealer, specialising in classic American cars.

As we carried on, the skies didn't exactly darken; rather the shadows became slightly less well defined, and suddenly we were driving through torrential rain. Debbie saw lightning, I must have been looking the other way. In ten minutes, the rain was over. In fifteen, the deep puddles on the road had evaporated away, and the rain was forgotten.

The bridge at Devil's Elbow deserves a mention, since we had to double back on a particularly pretty old four lane stretch to get to it.

We've made great time today (translation, we're going too fast) and we've made it to a motel in Lebanon, Missouri. And what a motel! The Munger Moss Motel has the traditional American motel layout, like the cabins at Butlins, one storey, room doors front onto the carpark, no corridors. There's an outdoor swimming pool, and fantastic neon out the front. What's more it's in Lebanon, the town made famous by the Human League song.

We've had a proper meal too, at long last. Steak for Debbie, catfish for me. I really wanted a steak, but I've never eaten catfish and it's a bit of a big thing in these parts. $30 to stuff our faces; ridiculous.
 

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