I say goodbye to Oklahoma, I take my last photo of the Oklahoma Town markers on the road in Commerce, OK. I stop by the Dairy King to get a banana milkshake and a postcard to send off before I head to Kansas. I’m not very far from the border and won’t be in Kansas very long. Kansas is the shortest stretch of Route 66. You head north from Oklahoma and cut east, and you’re in Missouri, approx 30 miles of road, I believe.
I stopped at a small white bridge crossing the river. It’s a narrow one-way bridge you can cross over coming from the north. As I pulled up, so did another car. It was a group of four older women. One asked me where I’m from, and we chatted for a minute as I met the rest of the group. They were so nice and all from just north of Tulsa, Oklahoma. They had been seeing various stretches of Route 66 in Oklahoma together, doing pieces at a time on day trips; their longest being a 16-hour day where they got home at Midnight. This was their first day trip outside of Oklahoma to see the Kansas Leg. They were decked out in Route 66 shirts and had a Will Rogers cutout that was with them for their photos. I ask if they would like me to take a photo of all of them on the bridge, I take a selfie on one of their phones for fun. I ask if I could take a photo of them with my film camera. They post next to the bridge and ask if my parents’ travelling gnome could join in the picture. I said my mom would love this, the four of them, Will Rogers and Ryder, post for what I’m sure will be a great photo when it’s developed.
I run into the group a couple more times on my stops through Kansas. We joke about who was following whom. Leaving Kansas, there is a large Kansas 66 sign you’re able to drive through. You then approach a roadside bar. Outside, on the road is a yellow line that stretches across the highway. A Kansas Shield west of the line and a Missouri Shield to the east. I’ve reached the literal state line and said my goodbye to Kansas.
Kansas Photos
I make my way through Joplin, Missouri; I stop for a lemonade at Starbucks so I can post photos and publish the journal entry from yesterday. I take this opportunity to sort out the final stretch of my Route 66 journey. I should be in St Louis tomorrow and Chicago Monday night. I’m not sure when I’ll make my final stop at Navy Pier, but sometime next week. I can’t believe it’s coming to an end, as I approach 2 weeks now since I’ve left L.A. and 3 weeks on the road in total.
I stopped in Springfield, a college town of Missouri. I walked around downtown. With college back in session, the bars seemed lively. Walking a couple of blocks around the downtown square, in search of neon signs to photograph. There were a couple of old theaters, bar signs, and various things I found interesting at night.
Springfield is the birthplace of Route 66, they have a monument called the Queen’s Gate. It is a beautiful structure that happened to be lining up with the sunset. As I drove by it on my way to my hotel, I got to the gate just as the sun was setting. This trip has felt like a series of moment to have just fallen in place at just the right time. Whether it is catching sunsets at just the right time, finding drive-in theaters you weren’t expecting, or thinking about them earlier in the day. For a trip that I have planned, nothing since the Grand Canyon, just showing up to places and things still seem to happen with purpose. What that purpose is? I don’t know.
As the sun starts to set on the gate, the sun shines through the center of the silver ring, and the orange stained glass lights up as the sunlight hits the glass just perfectly. The golden warmth of the sun really brings this structure to life. I walk through the middle, taking in the artwork lining the structure’s inner ring. I’m standing there, and I hear a rumble of “God Bless America” playing from the road itself. “OH!” I think to myself, this is where the musical road is. There was one in New Mexico that didn’t work, so I was excited to find I was right by the other one in Missouri. It’s a gimmick, where the rumble strips on St Louis Ave. are set up so that when driven over at 30mph, God Bless America can be made out from the rumbling of the road. This is just another coincidence, where things just find me by accident.
After my neon search, I drive back by the Queens Gate, now lit up by the lights within the structure and on the pavement. Still beautiful, but nothing is the sunset perfectly hitting the gate, shining down St. Louis Ave. Tomorrow we will see the Gateway Arch of St Louis and have one last day in the Show Me State of Missouri.
Missouri Photos
