Urban decay to geologic beauty

August 13^th, 2026

St. James, Missouri

Woke at 8:00am and got ready quickly for once. 

Loaded up the bike and was already dripping sweat when I finished.

Checked out of the motel and got my deposit back, then rode over to the highway that will take me to the Interstate.  Was just after 9:00am, so ahead of schedule.

The original route here is no longer drivable over the river, most of the earlier routes are like that.  So, I will use the modern Interstate to get across the river and then pick up the route on the other side.

We got across, and due to road works, had to use the exit a mile farther down and back track to reach the road that was formerly Route 66 in the 1930s, which is the main route I am following today.

My first stop was the west end of Chain of Rocks Bridge, which was accessible via a nice little park.

I parked the bike and hiked about ¼ mile up the path and onto the bridge.  It was a bit far to go to reach the curve in the bridge, but at least was able to get some photos.

I did find an information board that said the bridge was in operation until the interstate was opened in 1970, at which time it was closed to traffic.  The lack of value in the steel at the time made the cost to tear it down prohibitive, so it was left in place and later was repurposed as a pedestrian/bicycling pathway in the late 1990s.

I then started south on the route and almost immediately the surroundings turned ugly.

While some of the areas were basic residential neighborhoods and small business, just in old buildings that had seen better days, much of the route was burned out, gutted or boarded up buildings, homes (nice large mansion style houses) and apartment blocks.

Hardly anyone around, not even that many cars parked along the streets.  Appears much of the properties are abandoned.  Those that were lived in looked like the probably shouldn’t be.

To make things even worse, the road conditions were abysmal.  I think the gravel roads in Alaska were smoother.  Missouri is on its way to beat Illinois for the shittiest roads.

And to top it off, while riding this less than nice areas, there are stop signs or stop lights about every 2 blocks, and I caught EVERY light red for at least 20 lights.  And the red lights here last at least 1 minute on average.

This went on until I reached downtown St. Louis, which while the grand buildings of the early 1900s and some more modern construction created a nice skyline, the place was really not much better.  Empty or run down and not a huge amount of activity.

Traffic did increase, but few people out walking about.  The road constructions crews even had security on site with them.  Not sure what that says about the city.

I finally reached the turn to head down to the river. Passed through another area that was sketchy as hell, mainly warehouses or factories, not sure if in use or not.

Reached the river frontage and this was nicely done up.  A huge wall of mural/graffiti artworks, and then the road that runs along the shore in front of the Gateway Arch.

The area along the shore is a parking lot, and it was $11 to park, so I decided not to park and walk around, and probably not a good place to leave the bike and gear anyway.

I rode past the Arch, turned around and rode back, then stopped and parked illegally for 1 minute to take a few photos.  It was early, no one around, no harm done.

Retraced my route back to the Route 66 and headed southwest.  While slightly better, was still pretty beat up area of town.

Eventually we reached the suburbs and things improved, lots of more modern buildings and business were full and active.

Final opinion is if you are doing Route 66, just skip St Louis.  Unless you really want to go see the Gateway Arch, or some other site that might be in town, there is nothing to see and the route is basically a huge waste of time.  Its really just a tour of the ghettos of the city.

Only reason to ride it would be if you are a dumb completist that wants to do all of something….wait, that sounds a little too close to home.

As for the Arch, you can use the 1950s alignments that will bring you across the river right into downtown and save a lot of time and riding through nothing.

I stopped on the very edge of town to fuel up and then the route joins Interstate 44 here, the next 15 miles most of the original road is now under that freeway.

I did turn off at one exit though to visit the remains of a small town (Sylvan Beach) which is now the Route 66 information center.  You drive a short distance on the old road, and it ends at what is left of the bridge over the river.  All within site of the modern interstate.

I parked at the building and walked over to the bridge to see what was left, took photos and recorded some video.

As I walked back to the bike, two women were walking up to it and asked if I was the Arizona rider (another bike in the parking lot as well).

We started talking.  Thinking the one was local to the area, but the other was a woman from Japan.  Turns out she had studied for some time at ASU in Tempe, AZ.  She had seen the license plate on the bike.

They wanted to get a picture of her and me with the bike, and later just me and the bike.  We talked a bit about my ride and future travel plans and I was told to definitely visit Japan (I is in the plans someday).

Once we finished talking, I went inside while they went over to the bridge (and I think there might be a small trail over there too).

I walked around the gift shop a bit and then talked to the lady running the center.  Missouri did not create a state specific passport booklet with all the various sites like Illinois did.  They had the standard blue passport and the gold centennial passports, but not only are they quite expensive, but they only cover a handful of spots in each state, whereas the state specific book is just as many pages and covers just that one state.

She did have a pad of tear off maps that covered some of the major sites along the route between St. Louis and Oklahoma City, and went over the Missouri stuff and mentioned a few other places along the way.

I then walked the small museum on site, and then left the building and got back on the bike to continue.

We got back on the interstate, and then a few miles later got off and started to follow the various parts of the routes still drivable, mostly local or county roads now.

The route again ran parallel to the freeway, like a frontage road for much of the distance, but occasionally would curve off a mile or so to pass through a small town or just for terrain reasons.

You do cross from the north to the south and back to the north of I-44 quite a few times as it followed the Route 66 route (which was a 4 lane road toward the end of its time) and cut the old route in pieces, so you jump back and forth, and of course lots of extra curves and routes to get around those spots.  Probably 40% of the pavement has nothing to do with the old routing, just working around the modern freeway.

I stopped at an old gas station to take some photos and then went inside.  Started to talk with the guy in there and asked when it was last in service, and turns out this place is just a modern recreation.  The building was a generic place built to be used as a church which closed down several years back.

This guy bought the building and converted it to look like a period service station and put filled it with lots of period antiques and other pieces.  I think much of it his personal collection.

He hangs out in the place a few days a week and just talks to people.  One way to retire, I guess.

Bit later we left the route and headed south a few miles to reach the Meramec Caverns.

These caves have been known since at least the mid-1800s and were tourist spots even before Route 66 existed.  They were used by Jesse James and his partner after robbing places in the Missouri area, which gives them some colorful history.

I arrived at the parking lot and secured and covered the bike.  Going to take another risk as I will be inside for about 2 hours.

I wore my riding jacket again as the caves are pretty chilly here in Missouri, typically only about 55-60 degrees inside.  It is nice to have the jacket on when in there, though the humidity was high in this cave, so still made me sweat.

I went into the main building which houses the café, the gift shop and the entrance to the cavern.  The cavern opening was quite large, and the building was basically built right in front of it.

The first few hundred feet of the space is huge, and even cars could drive inside back in the day (they actually did).  It had been mined a bit as well for Saltpeter during the Civil war, so that probably opened up some areas as well.

The floor is now all paved for the first bit, lit and signage and line control barriers setup at the main entrance.  You buy your ticket and then wait till the next tour starts.  They run every 30 minutes.

I thankfully only had to wait about 5 minutes and we got started.

A guide takes you through the cavern, giving local history and information, with a focus on the Jesse James connection, as well as some geologic background on some of the formations later in the cave.

The route has a paved path and railings to basically guide you along, and they turn on and off lights as you move through, so always dark in front and behind you. 

You visit the lower chambers first, which are damper as the river runs through this area, you can hear it running near the area where the cavern heads toward the larger river next to the parking lot (the cave river enters that river, but via a siphon, so no above ground chamber on the river).  The only entry point in that area had been paved over when the lot was created.

The caves water system originates in a natural underground spring about 16 miles away and the caves is also that large, but we will only see the first ¾ miles of that distance.

Once done, we head up into another chamber that was found years later when someone detected a crack in the wall and they busted through.  They found some amazing, and quite rare formations in this area, one that is so rare it really should not exist, and is one of only two formations of this type in the world (that we know about anyway).

This section of the caves is a lot of upward ramps, and then you walk around a massive stalagmite (500 feet in circumference) that has gotten so large it reached the ceiling and cut off the flow of water to one side which has now dried out.   Geologists estimate that this formation is about 33 million years old.

Once you finish there, you have to walk up 58 steps to reach the small chamber with the unique formation that sits inside.  Just look at the photo, too difficult to explain it in words.

Once done, you walk back down, and then sit in a small theater like setup for a light show and short film and light show.

Then you exit the cave.

It was a great cave though.  The group about 20 people, so small enough to let people get out of the way for many photos, though sometimes you still had to take pictures with people in them.

I spent some time talking with the guide between his speeches.  Besides some specific questions on the caverns, turned out he was a motorcyclist as well, so we ended up talking bikes.

While we were waiting in the theater for another small group that was just behind us that they wanted to join our group for the film to avoid showing it to the small group alone, we again talked bikes as he asked for questions from people and no one asked any, so I just picked up conversation again.

After exiting the cavern, I went over to the café to eat, I had not had any food all day and it was not about 3:00pm.

Had a large burger and fries and a drink.

After eating, I stopped to talk with another couple who was riding as well.  I had seen them briefly at that fake gas station a few miles back, and the guy inside has told me they were from the UK.

We talked a bit about the heat and humidity, and some about routing and such.  They are heading west as well, so very high chance we might bump into each other again.  They are staying about 15 miles away, so depending on when we both leave, could cross paths down the road some.

I then went out, got on the bike and headed back to the interstate and picked up the access road again.

Rest of the ride was basically just small towns.

I missed one of the old gas stations, and did not feel like turning around to see it, saw enough to get the idea.

A few other old or well-known buildings that I decided were not big enough deals to stop for photos.

I did pull over in Cuba, MO to get the Missouri 66 sign with the bike, then kept going.

I was getting tired, so skipped stopping at the big rocking chair (once the largest working chair in the world, but now just the largest on Route 66.)

Reached the small town I am staying in and found the motel.

Went to check in and it was another unstaffed place.

They had a kiosk that I tried to use, but was giving me issues, then I noticed another sign that if I had made a reservation via 3^rd party, I should have an email or message with the code for the door.

I checked and had that, so went to the room it listed and the doors have keypads on them.

Instead of a physical key or keycard, you just punch in the code and the door opens.

I moved the bike over to the room and unloaded it.

Then sat inside and tried to cool down for an hour or so.  I literally sat next to the AC unit which was down by the floor in the hall to the bathroom.

I then needed to go get something to drink, was almost out of water as well.

Put the jacket back on and rode out to the main road, only to notice the large fuel station/store right next to the Burger King which is behind the motel.  I could have just walked over.  But this was easier since I was buying water as well.

Bought the gallon of water, and 4 bottles of tea.  Not sure I will drink them all tonight, but will have something for the morning ride then.

Back at the room I changed out of the riding gear and sat to cool off again while looking at things online.

I then decided I was hungry enough to get food around 7:30, so walked over to the Burger King after securing and covering the bike (was just too hot earlier, sun was hitting the parking lot directly).

Had to stand in line for almost 10 minutes while the guy and lady in front of me ordered everything on the menu (or so it seemed) as between them they had 8 kids to feed.  They were ordering separately, so guessing they were coming from some kind of youth event or something, all the kids were roughly same age.

Then of course I had to wait to get my food, was about 20-25 minutes.  They must have messed up something, I did not hear exactly what he said, but they gave me double the cheese bites because I waited so long.

I sat down to eat, then went up to get some ranch for the cheese bites.  They gave it to me, but she said they normally would charge for them, guess they have started doing that now as well, so guess I will not be eating much at Burger King anymore.

Then as I started my sandwich, I realized a few bites in that it was the wrong one.  Receipt was correct, so they just made wrong sandwich.  But as they are same price, and I had the extra food from the delay, I was not going to argue the point.

Finished eating and came back to the room to plan tomorrow’s route.

Kind of wishing I had thought about doing this all long before the ride.  It takes 1-2 hours to go over the maps to find the correct routes based on the various alignments, plot them into Google Maps (no “follow Route 66” option) and send them to my phone so I can pull them up later (and it takes 3-4 maps to get the route to stay put and not constantly get re-routed back to the Interstate, something that Maps is really starting to piss me off about.)

I then have to review the route to mentally note the various stops or possible stops so I can be watching for them while I ride (and I still miss a few each day).

After that I am writing the blog for tonight, but again, will not upload it as that process takes time and its already late enough.

Tomorrow I will get almost to the end of Missouri and will spend 2 nights there so I can catch up on some things and hopefully stay off the bike for at least 1 day.  My hands, wrists and knees are hurting a bit more than they should, so need a rest.

Catch ya down the road.

Todays Route: