The road squeezed us between the Katy Trail and the Missouri River, eventually joining old Route 66, celebrating her 100th birthday. I just reached 74. Like a good mother, the road delivered us to an old favorite, Rigazzi’s on The … Read More
Finding Haven
From Washington, Highway 100 stretches toward Hermann like a clothesline, draping over bluffs and peeking down ravines at your road’s companion, the Missouri River. The river was the major highway when John Colter traveled upstream with Lewis and Clark. Later, … Read More
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
“Blues is the roots. Everything else is the fruits.” —Willie Dixon. Only a few steps into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame we found this: Jim Morrison’s Cub Scout uniform. Iconic. Ironic. Morrisonic. We moved deeper… The Rock and … Read More
A Higher Power
I warmed my hands by the fire. The crisp fall day had ushered me through rolling loess hills, past newspaper offices whose names are as vibrant as their communities: Stanberry Headlight. Fairfax Forum. Tarkio Avalanche. I learned that Tarkio is … Read More
Love this rollercoaster.
The road to Falling Spring is a destination in itself. Missouri highway delivers you there. And Falling Spring Mill has been restored. But wait. There’s more. A little further down the road, Greer Spring busts out of a mountainside gushing … Read More
Mother turns 100
Route 66 has provided much of the wallpaper to our lives. Music and food. Art and architecture. Grapes and wrath. This year the Mother Road celebrates her 100th birthday. She’s aged in fits and starts, triumphs and tragedies, but we … Read More
Low water. High time.
Early spring. Jacks needs rain. Floated the upper Jacks last weekend. A few intrepid souls put in at the Prongs, the rest began from Buck Hollow, whose beach offered an easy launch thanks to low water. The journey was as … Read More
It goes through Saint Louie
How did Route 66 become the Mother Road? Steinbeck helped, of course, and Kerouac. So did a 1928 transcontinental footrace called the Bunion Derby, using Route 66 for much of the way. Route 66 became an art form, a gallery … Read More
Panhandlerama
Two icons along Route 66 point to a third. Sticking up like a wart on the flat windy Texas Panhandle, where dust is a commodity spread liberally along the armpit of Oklahoma, a leaning tower teeters, posing for shutterbugs intent … Read More