A New Wander, Day 6: St Louis to St Robert

  This is part five of many. You really should read them in order. You'll find Part One here, and here's a link to the photo album for this trip. 

 This turned out to be a very easy-going day. Unfortunately, it was hot enough when we started that I didn't bother putting the top down at all, but other than that and a problem with access to downtown St Louis, it's been a relaxing day.

 I started off by trying to go see some of the sights of downtown St Louis, which I've never been to. I figured that, it being Sunday, there'd be very few people down there and it'd be easy to park near things like the sculpture garden and the city garden and the other park-related places they have there.

 Google Maps routed us along Collinsville Road. Turns out that when I thought I was telling it not to avoid highways, I was actually turning on the "avoid highways" instruction. My bad. Apparently there are no frontage roads for it to direct us down. Anyway, I finally started ignoring its proposed route until I got to the exit for downtown off Interstate 70; from which it directed us down a road that was closed for construction. Then it took us two blocks over and south, and all the cross-streets going to the area I wanted to go to were closed off with barricades. After circling around the area for fifteen or twenty minutes, I finally saw a sign saying that today was Pride Fest. So the area was off-limits to mere tourists who didn't want to pay to get in; and of course parking required a hefty fee.

 Okay; so the attractions of downtown St Louis will have to wait for a future visit. I drove off to get a carton of cigarettes, which are cheaper in Missouri than Texas by about $10. Sadly, the place I stopped only had one carton of my brand, so that's all I could get. Then we headed off to the west, and for the first time on this trip, we started an audiobook, a slightly glib murder mystery called Crashed, which involves a professional burglar who gets blackmailed into providing security for a porno film being made by the heir to an organized crime syndicate. We're 20 chapters in after today's drive, and it's amusing but cliché-ridden.

 One of the first stops I'd planned after St Louis was a big model-train exhibit in some town west of the city. It doesn't open until noon on Sundays, so we skipped that. I drove instead across the river into Warren County, the last county to visit in the state of Missouri. So that makes 39 states now where I've been to all the counties. I stopped at the first gas station I came to and checked the map for a route to the next planned stop, and as a result we crossed all of Warren County, then headed south, back across the Missouri River, on local highways. 

 For lunch, we found a Greek restaurant in the town of Belle. Before we left, I posted this review on Google Maps:

Wow. Can't believe the best gyro I've ever had was to be found in this quaint little family restaurant in the middle of Missouri, just over the hill from the edge of nowhere. The pita had a slight sweetness to it; the meat was I Mean perfectly done; the veggies were as fresh as can be, and the feta tastes like Granny makes it out back.

 It really was that good. Apparently I'm not the first to discover this; there are several reviews by people from St Louis that indicate they think it's worth the 90-minute drive from the city. Well, I wouldn't go quite that far, but it is excellent.

 

 After lunch, we moseyed south and west to Ha-Ha-Tonka State Park, where there are the ruins of a castle on a bluff overlooking the lake. It's not actually a castle, of course, just a big-ass house some rich guy from Kansas City built around the turn of the last century, because he liked the lay of the land. He bought 5,000 acres and put up his country palace, finishing it just before he died in a traffic accident in 1906. Then, during World War II, the house and stables burned and the house was abandoned. The water tower he had built burned in the 1970s, and at some point soon after that the family gave the wreck (and the 5,000 acres) to the state of Missouri, which cleaned it up and made it a state park and tourist attraction. 

 

Castle Ruins

 It sits, as I said, on a bluff overlooking a lake. The bluff is perhaps 700 feet high, so it's quite a sight, and they've put in a number of overlooks. I could hear loud music playing on the beach by the lakeshore, and see dots that I think must've been kayakers far below. It was about a five-hundred-foot walk up a slight rise from the parking lot, but Roland felt unable to make the trek, so I went alone.

 

 After that, we headed down to Lebanon, Missouri. There's nothing in the way of attractions there, but I had calculated that it was about as far as we'd be able to get after leaving St Louis (when that was going to be on Monday) and still get a hotel. Beyond Lebanon are a lot of miles of very rural highway with no major towns, and any motels we might come across would be hit-or-miss. So we stopped in Lebanon at a Denny's and looked up local hotels, and found that almost all of them are 30 miles east, near Fort Leonard Wood, a huge army training base; I guess all the trainees have family always coming to visit, so all the motels are there.

 

 And now so are we. 

 

 We decided on dinner at Ruby Tuesday, which is either very good or very bad, depending on the flip of a coin. Close by that restaurant, though, we spotted a "pizzeria & pub" called Poppa's or Pappa's or Pappo's or something. We neither of us wanted pizza but we figured that the "& pub" part ensured other things on the menu. It turned out to be a good choice. I had a meatball calzone while Roland had a meatball marinara bowl. Both were very good, and the service was outstanding. We were content and able to return to our room to watch Jason Bourne movies. 

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