MARQUETTE – Day 7

Oklahoma City to Springfield, MO, 330 miles.  At 7:00 I went over to see if I could help Chuck replace his fan belt, but he was almost done.  Luckily he got by with  just tilting the radiator and the light bar forward in order to get the new belt in.  And Bill had a new bolt already in his shock.   So we hit the road and got onto old 66, which parallels Interstate 44 in Oklahoma, great old two lane road with lots to see.  First stop was at Pops. Every kind of soda pop under the sun.Then a neat round barn lured us off the road,,,,,1898Bob always has to try out the farm machinery,  now just how does this work?????   We were really enjoying this two lane road which undulated up and down over the terrain and had so little traffic.  We were dilly dallying along because we were thinking that we had a two hundred mile piece of cake day,  stopped for lunch in Chandler, OK, and hit a good antique store.   And then punched up the GPS and discovered that we still had 300 miles to go instead of 100 miles and it was already 1:00!!!!  Oy yoy yoy!!  Only one thing to do, we jumped onto Interstate 44, which was not nearly so friendly,,,,,,,,

  and punched out 100 miles at top speed, canceled our previous reservations and made new ones a little closer.  This did give us a little more time to play around, so back onto old 66 which took us to Baxter Springs, KS and this old gas station. We immediately attracted some onlookers, and were trying to get some good directions because a bridge was out up ahead and our trusty GPS machines could not handle this.  Anyway, we stumbled onto Gabe, nicknamed Crazylegs, you can see why in the following picture. Notice his feet. He was rattling off directions, and we were all getting a glazed look after about the 3rd turn, so finally he says, just follow me I’ll get you there on the road to Joplin. Away we went with our personal guide, first stop was at the old Marsh River Arch Bridge,,,,, and then at the four women gas station,,,, and this was where we found the Tow Mater, the inspiration for that character in the movie Cars. We staggered back onto I44 for the last 75 miles and got into our motel at 7:40,  just a little road weary.  And here is the topper, Chuck is 80 miles behind us and finished the day the same way he started, with another eaten up fan belt.  Gotta hit the ha a a y y y , , , , z z z z z z z z.