We spent the morning swimming, playing and doing laundry at our KOA in Springfield, IL. From there, we made our way to a local joint known as Charlie Parker's Diner. My MIL had seen an episode of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives which had featured this restaurant and it's specialty dish called "Shoe." The place was super-fun and the "shoe" was delicious, if not pretty. When we left Charlie Parker's, we got on Historic Route 66--the really, really old part of it. There were actually sections of the original road--some paved with brick and some paved with concrete slabs. In one of the concrete slabs, some long-ago turkeys left their mark, so we had fun taking pictures of the turkey tracks in the middle of the road. The old highway wound us around through some beautiful farmland and some quaint little towns, and ultimately popped us out in St. Louis, MO. Here, we detoured off the Mother Road for a tour of the Gateway Arch and Western Expansion Museum. From there, we visited another Triple D recommendation--Sweetie Pie's--for some good old southern comfort food. When we walked in, we noticed a film crew, and we soon found out that the Oprah Network is filming a reality TV show called "Welcome to Sweetie Pie's," due to air in the fall. Towards the end of our meal, my MIL asked to have a picture with the owner/head cook/former Ikette (the backup singers for Ike and Tina Turner). Next thing we know, she is posing with our whole group and the TV crew is right on her heals. She visited with us for a few minutes, and then we were all signing releases for the Oprah Network to show our faces on TV. Ruth is convinced we are all going to be famous! Finally, we arrived at our KOA just outside of St. Louis, where we had reserved a special cabin for our little train lover. As I type, Max is dreaming of trains from the inside of an old, red caboose! I wish you all could have seen how excited he was! I had a nice slideshow of these adventures prepared to post, but through some computer glitch, I couldn't get it to save. So, I will just share a few pictures of some of the highlights.
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| Charlie Parker's |
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| "Shoe" |
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| Brick-paved road |
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| A special Route 66 attraction |
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| Turkey tracks |
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| Gateway Arch |
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| Looking up at the arch |
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| Lewis |
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| ...and Clark |
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| She made it to the top! |
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| Cardinals' Stadium |
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| The Old Courthouse |
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| Sweetie Pie's |
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| Sweetie Pie's Stupid Stick |
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| Posing with Sweetie Pie's owner |
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| Max's train |
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| One happy little boy |
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| Stowaways |
