Hot Time in Missouri

Tuesday, August 2 - We are moving west again.  I thought we were leaving the melon country behind, but we came past some produce markets today with Missouri-grown watermelons.  I'm sure they are not as good as the Indiana ones, though.  When we left Indiana in May (when the fields were too wet to plant anything), Joe  wanted to come back through here when they were picking the melons, and when Joe M. and Cathy invited us to go to the Brickyard 400 with them, that sealed the deal -- what's an extra 1,000 miles here and there.  We leave this area behind with very fond memories of this trip (much better than the tornadoes I had to worry about in the spring) and look forward to our next visit.

We got on the road about 9:30 this morning, and yes, the casino was behind a fence.  (This is not the best part of Illinois).  But this campground had security, and a shuttle that went back and forth to the casino -- you just picked up a phone and called for it.  AND, the shuttle even takes guests back and forth to major sporting events, since both the baseball and football stadiums are just across the river.  This would be a great benefit if you were in town for one of those -- not having to fight the traffic or parking. 

As we crossed the Mississippi again, we got a better photo of the magnificent arch guarding this city, and of some of the downtown buildings.

 We took I-55 to I-44 to get through the city, then picked up Hwy 21 for our scenic drive.  We fueled for $3.519, considerably less than Illinois and Indiana.  Hwy 21 was scenic, the foothills of the Ozarks, with lakes, creeks and rivers through the green, rolling hills (and lots of roadkill -- who knew Missouri had armadillos?).

We found a beautiful picnic area on a hilltop in Arcadia Valley, a historic area founded in the 1800s and a popular vacation spot!   So we had our lunch and took a little break, but were back on the road at 1:00.

It was a little too hot for a picnic (100 degrees), but another time this would have been a great spot to do that.

From miles away, we spotted some smokestacks that turned out to be from an old lead smelter company in Glover, Mo.  Expert Joe thought they were probably 500-600 ft. tall.

Somehow, we missed one turn and ended up on on Hwy K for 22 miles, but that too was a scenic road -- a little more hilly and curvy, but pretty. We finally hooked back up with Hwy 21 (and a deer crossed the road in front of us!), and took it to U.S. 60, but the temperature kept creeping up and I looked at the map and figured out that we had added about 100 miles to this drive by taking the scenic route.  We were not going to make it to Branson today, so I started looking for a campground to get us off the road.  We found a campground right on Hwy 60 (Ozark Mountain Springs RV Park) near Mountain View.  It is a nice, shady campground, not very busy right now.  We set up camp about 3:30 p.m., and it was l03 degrees, still going up.  Joe just hooked up the electricity, and we stayed inside the RV for the rest of the day. They are setting record high temperatures all around us -- Springfield (about 40 miles west of us) recorded 108.

Our scenic drive was 222 miles, and we are still 88 miles from Branson.  Hopefully, we'll get in there before it reaches 100 degrees tomorrow and get set up, then find an air conditioned theatre to spend the rest of the day in.  The mountains of Ruidoso are sounding better and better, but that is more than 800 miles away yet.