St. Louis, MO

 Our first stop in St. Loius was Ted Drewes Frozen Custard!  This is a “Route 66 Gold Star Location”.  Ted Drewes Sr. opened this custard stand on Route 66 in 1931.  He, then later his son, has been selling frozen custard here ever since.  This place is best known for their Concretes, so thick that they pass them out the window upside down.  There are not many Ice Cream shops that I pass up.  Ted Drewes is one I never will.  I think we both enjoyed our concretes.

Having lived in St. Louis for three years we were planning on meeting up with, and going out to dinner with our old next door neighbors, Russ and Carol.  Russ is a reasonably healthy man but he has been plagued with medical mishaps ever since we have known him. These mishaps include agent orange induced diabetes, Guilliain-Barré syndrome, a compound broken arm as the result of a fall in China and upon returning from a cruise in March 2020, he checked into the hospital with COVID symptoms.  Tuesday we received a text from Carol.  Dinner would have to be cancelled, Russ had fell and broke his leg above the knee.  Russ and Carol’s son is an emergency room M.D.   In this case the tuition money was well spent.     

Route 66 planning: Posted by Carl

Start of the Roadtrip

In 2008 and 2009 Sandy and I traveled the old Historical Route 66 from Chicago to Lebanon, Missouri.  (Lebanon marked by the arrow on the map to the left)  So, it is from here that we will begin this year’s road-trip on September 30. 

So to begin this trip we needed to get to Lebanon.  We chose to fly to St. Louis, rent an automobile, and then drive on to Lebanon.  Not wanting to park our own auto at the airport for one and a half months, we corralled our grandson Colin, now living here in Ohio, to drive us to the airport. This worked out for everyone except Sandy.  I drove my old beat up truck to Colin’s apartment complex and parked there, avoiding the ridiculously high airport parking fee.  Colin gets the use of the truck for seven weeks (he already has plans to pick up some new furniture with it).  The only loser was Sandy; she hates my truck; she hates the way it looks, the way it sounds, the way it smells…. she just really hates that truck.  And, she had to ride in it for one and a quarter hours to go to Colin’s place.  The truck had not stopped rolling before she had hopped out of it.  In her book, this first leg of the trip was not going to be a high point.

In payment for the ride to the airport we took Colin to “Son of Thurman”, in Galena Ohio.  Good bar food.