First of all, sad news. Paul's dad passed away last Saturday (the 21st) after a month-long battle with Covid. He fell ill around the 25th of July, ended up on a ventilator a few days later, got off of that a week later and was seemingly on the mend, but took a turn for the worse and passed away. We were supposed to be on our Florida trip this week but had to cancel because of his decline and eventual passing. He was a really great man and we will miss him immensely.
But now it's finally time for part two of our Missouri vacation. For part one (days 1-3) click here.
Day Four - Paul and I left the girls with Aunt Cheryl and set out on our road trip. We went to Bentonville, Arkansas, walked around the town square, had a small bite to eat and then headed into Oklahoma, stopping at the AR/OK/MO tri-state marker on the way.
From there we drove up to Afton and stopped at a historic spot on Route 66, a chuck of road that is no longer part of the highway but you can park and walk around and get pictures, and there is a Will Rogers memorial marker.
Then we drove Route 66 to Vinita, with plans to have lunch at the historic Clanton's Cafe, but it was closed!
Not sure why on a Saturday and don't think it was Covid-related as I think it had been open days before according to Google. So we backtracked back to Afton and got pictures of the historic Rest Haven motel.
Next up was Miami (pronounced My-am-uh), home of the historic "ribbon road". This was a 9' wide section of highway in Oklahoma, because they only had enough money to make it either half as wide or half as long, so they opted for the former. We had lunch at another historic spot, Waylan's Ku-Ku (as in cuckoo clock). I would have loved to see inside but it was drive-through only.
Out next stop was the town of Commerce, OK, and the childhood home of Mickey Mantel. Very cool.
Leaving Commerce, we went through Quapaw, across the Kansas state line into Baxter Springs, and then over the historic Rainbow Bridge.
We continued on through Riverton and into Galena, where we stopped at Cars on the Route.
Just past that we crossed into Missouri and went through Joplin, Webb City, Carthage, Avilla, and a bunch of tiny towns almost to Springfield before heading south back to Branson. It was a long but really fun day.
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