Missouri and Illinois

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Back on US 50 this morning, starting southeast of Kansas City, MO and traveling east on divided highway until Sedalia. It was very overcast and rained a little early on, but eventually cleared and turned out to be a great day.

We’ve been to Sedalia before… in fact, three years ago. They must really like burgers in this town. There’s the Wheel Inn since 1947, Eddie’s since 1937, and we spotted several others that looked as if they’d been around since before McDonalds. (There’s a McDonalds there too.) One of Sedalia’s other claims to fame is that Scott Joplin lived there for a few years at the beginning of his career.

On the east side of Sedalia, US 50 is once again a two-lane road through gently rolling hills. We cruised through Syracuse, MO, population 172, and Tipton with its eightball water tower.

And then we came to California, MO. It was just outside of California three years ago that our transmission blew. We limped into Jefferson City and ended up staying there the better part of two days while we had it rebuilt. At that time we took a very leisurely tour of the Missouri state capital, enjoyed dinner at Madison’s on Madison. Today we just whizzed on through, finally taking leave of US 50 in favor of US 54 heading northeast.

Our next destination was Hannibal. We took US 54 to Mexico where we found route J, a pleasant rural road. Now that we were north of I-70, the terrain had flattened out again. At one point, a hawk with what looked to be at least a three foot wingspan swooped low across the road directly in front of us, nearly touching the windshield. What a thrill to get a close up look of a such magnificent bird.

Route J eventually brought us to 19 which in turn took us through Center and a little further to US 61 which delivered us right into downtown Hannibal.

If you didn’t know that Mark Twain had lived in Hannibal at one time, you’d soon figure it out since virtually everything in the town is named after him or one of his characters. We visited his boyhood home and that of Becky Thatcher plus the Mark Twain Museum and a couple of other buildings included in the price of the tickets.

And then we crossed the Mississippi River into Illinois. We took I-72 across the very flat farmland that makes up so much of Illinois into Springfield. We stopped for ice cream and then hoped to check in for the night, but no room at any of several inns so on we went.

We’re in Decatur, IL tonight, home of Staley’s.

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