Day 10 - Three States, One Day

Eggs, bacon, pancakes and a view is what was on the menu this morning for breakfast!  We ate out on our little deck prior to leaving camp this morning and with the exception of a few flies...it was great!

Great Lake - Vinita, OK

We were on the road!  Today's plan was to drive the rest of Oklahoma, the small section (13 miles to be exact) of Kansas and part of Missouri.  Not too terribly far from the OK/ KS border this morning, it really took us no time at all to get to Kansas.  We thought this picture was pretty funny given that we were to only travel 13 short miles through Kansas, the sign welcoming us was more like a business card compared to the enormous ones that we encountered earlier on this trip - appropriate!

Kansas was quick.  We got turned around a bit at one point and had to find a place on the skinny little roads to turn around, which isn't 

easy when you are pulling a 27' rig behind you but, we figured it 

out.  There is a great little bridge between Baxter Springs and 

Riverton - Rainbow Bridge.  This is the last Marsh arch bridge (as 

in James Barney Marsh, the architect) like this on Route 66. All others are gone.  

James Marsh's Rainbow Bridge - Baxter Springs, KS

We made our way to the last town in Kansas before entering into Missouri....Galena, KS.  There is a small place there called Cars on the Route.  It is a small, one time gas station that has been restored and is now a tiny burger joint and gift shop.  Wait for it.....yes, this 
place has a connection to the movie "Cars" also!  I know, I know - I think this is the last one.  Anyway, there was an old tow truck behind this place long ago that was "discovered" by the Pixar crew as they made their way along 66 to get ideas for the movie.  This tow truck was named "Tow-Tater".  Quickly he was turned into a cartoon and added to the character list for the movie as "Tow-Mater".  The original tow truck sits in the parking lot of this small corner site and welcomes anyone who dares to climb up and take a photo with him.  We did, of course!  We also ate lunch here!!

Cars on the Route (top left), Tow-Tater with all of us inside the cab and the large bottom 
right photo is Tow-Mater from the movie "Cars" that also sits beside Tow-Tater.

Hurry, hurry....we got to get to Missouri!

Is it just me or do the "Welcome" signs seem to be getting smaller and smaller?

What the heck is this?  No "Welcome" here?....Just a  "Hey, you are crossing over!"

How about you SHOW ME some love, Missouri?

Joplin, MO is the fist town on the north east side of the Kansas state line

We needed to make some time up again today so unfortunately after we putzed around in Kansas we had to hit the highway and drive like mad to get far enough into Missouri that our day tomorrow wasn't a 10 hour day of driving.  Missouri, what we have seen of it anyway from the road, is beautiful. Lots of green trees and tons of cool rock formations.  We made some good distance today so hopefully tomorrow we'll get to spend a little time checking some of this state out!  In the meantime, we stopped at an RV park in Cuba, MO for the night.  This place is great.  It is like we are in a time warp back to the late 70's early 80's.  There are two HUGE pools with 30+ years of paint covering all the cracks and imperfections that have accumulated over the decades - one has a diving platform and the other a slide, there is a miniature golf course, a playgroumd, RV spots, tent camping spots and some long-term mobile home spots.  We set up camp and took the kids over to the pool area where the radio station that was blasting tunes played crazy good old music that would have thrown you back to the days of OP corduroy shorts, tube tops and the ever popular Farrah Faucet hair-do.  The kids swam and made some friends.  Once the sky fell dark the sound of frogs increased by the minute.  The boys that Cassidy and Eli were swimming with had some sort of fishing basket that they brought over to the pool area and the hunt for frogs was on!  I am not sure you can see in the photo below - but there are about 20 frogs in the basket that the kid on the left is holding - yikes!  Oh, did I happen to mention that these pools did NOT have any lights (I told you they were old) so all of this "hunting" was done by the glow of the ONE deck light that shone over this aquatic paradise.

  

As I sit and finish up tonight's post it is starting to rain.  Shale and I just looked at each other with the "oh-great" look in each other's eyes.  Towels are hung outside to dry, our camp chairs are set up on our oh-so-cool outdoor sisal rug along with who knows what else.  This could possibly be a mess in the morning - oh well...I guess we'll deal with that then.  I am off to dream of a mess-free morning.

Good night.