A journey on Route 66 and back to Missouri Life.
Last fall I got the chance to travel the full course of Route 66 from Chicago to Santa Monica with an old friend as he researched a piece he published in Rolling Stone. When he invited me along, he’d already been researching the route for months and had created a spreadsheet with every overnight stop and the distance between each. In general, the goal was to avoid chains as much as possible for dining while taking in some of the Mother Road’s most conspicuous attractions. There was just one problem from my perspective: we had to drive the entire Missouri section of the route in just one day.
Those of you who recognize something familiar about my byline may know that I’m the son of the two people responsible for reviving Missouri Life back in 1999. The truly devoted readers among you may also know that I’ve served in various capacities as editor, contributor, and book reviewer-in-chief throughout my career. Given my exposure to this publication, which has been proud to publish a Route 66 in Missouri travel guide these past ten years, I felt that one day was not enough to take advantage of all our state has to offer along the storied highway.
The itinerary was not for me to set, however. My friend had diligently chosen each day’s start and end points, but the amount of time we spent getting from one place to the next had some flexibility. I was determined to make the most of our time traversing my home state.
Roughly coinciding with my friend’s Route 66 road trip was my return to Missouri Life as associate publisher. Even though I was born in Iowa (a fact I routinely forget until I see it listed in my passport), Missouri has always been home, and my affinity for this state and all the turbulent, wacky history that shaped it has come with me wherever I’ve gone.
My friend and I set out on day two from downtown St. Louis. We immediately doubled back from this point across the Mississippi to go and walk across the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge from the Illinois side. After that, we were getting peckish so we stopped at Ted Drewe’s on Chippewa, where I picked up a pale yellow hat that I sported proudly for the remainder of the trip. Throughout the day, we ate at Missouri Hick Bar-B-Que, drove on what remains of the original road outside Devils Elbow, stopped for sodas at Fanning 66 Outpost, took a detour to Uranus, and admired the neon glow of Gary’s Gay Parita. By the time we hit extreme southeast Kansas, the sun had long set and we were both exhausted. We hit the freeway and didn’t stop again until we reached our hotel.
I was already familiar with the attractions we visited on our day-long jaunt through Missouri, but in many cases, it was the first time I was getting to see them in person. Working at Missouri Life, we learn every day about the many attractions our state has to offer, but we always seem to spend more time reading and writing about them than actually visiting them. From time to time we have to hop up from our desks and actually do the thing we are dedicated to encouraging our readers to do: experience Missouri and all it has to offer. I can say with certainty now that a day is not enough to experience Route 66 in Missouri, but that just means I’ll have to explore it in greater depth in the future.
To learn more about all that Route 66 in Missouri has to offer, get our brand new guidebook, available at MissouriLife.com/shop; the guide is free, just pay $4.99 for shipping.
This article was originally published in the January/February 2025 edition of Missouri Life magazine.
