Best part of the day: Camp Mi Casa
Worst part of the day: Fay’s inner thigh still an issue
Distance: 51 miles Riding Time: 4hrs 41 min
Bed count: 26 Sleeping Bag count: 18
It was hard to leave our hotel this morning. Last night, we had the best buffet dinner with amazing desserts. Our bed was so comfy. It was one of those kind of mornings where knowing that we only had a short, 50 mile day, we weren’t in any rush to get going. We had a lovely continental breakfast provided by the hotel. We did manage, though, to get on the road around 8:20ish.
Got ourselves back on Route 66 just north of Miami. We were told at the hotel yesterday about an old theater, the Coleman Theatre, back in Miami. It’s been around since 1928 and has never closed! Sorry we missed it!
Further up the road, we came to another small town, Commerce. It had the boyhood home of some fairly famous baseball player. Someone named Mickey Mantle! That name goes back 50 years!! Stopped for a couple of pictures of it.
(The plaque and boyhood home of NY Yankees great, Mickey Mantle.)
(A couple of sights in Commerce.)
Our route kept weaving between northwards and eastwards, but, always with a tailwind!! The next little town we passed through was Quapaw. For those of you who are M*A*S*H (the TV series) trivia aficionados, you’ll know the significance of that town. We’ll leave it up to you to figure it out.
After Quapaw, we crossed into Kansas for the whole 12-13 miles is has of Route 66!! Rolling along through Baxter Springs and a back road, but, still Route 66, we arrived at another famous landmark, the Rainbow Curve Bridge.
(The Rainbow Curve Bridge before the village of Riverton.)
(Our newfound French friends!!)
While there we happened to meet two couples on motorcycles from France!! Did our best to converse with them. They were riding from Chicago to LA figuring to take a couple weeks to get there.
Next up was the town of Galena, the oldest mining town in Kansas (so they claim). 
(A mural in Galena at the main intersection of town.)
Saw some more Route 66 and Cars (the Pixar movie) stuff in town! Real cute!!
Leaving Galena, we crossed into Missouri (no “Welcome to Missouri” sign on the Old Route 66 road).
We stopped at the town of Joplin at a McDonald’s to take a break. We’d gone around 35 miles and Fay was getting very grumpy and needed to eat. Ordered something to drink and we had our breakfast sandwiches that we had ordered last night at the casino! We had a leftover food credit from our dinner last night to get those sandwiches.
One of the helpful things that Missouri had that helped us navigate our Route 66 path through Joplin, Webb City, Carterville and into Carthage were these signs! Really didn’t need our ACA map to get us to our destination!! Just “follow the yellow brick road” as it were!!
We had only 15 more miles to get to our evening’s lodging at Camp Mi Casa and RV Park which has tent camping available. It was only $15.00. We made a stop over to Walmart to pick up dinner before going to camp.
Arriving at camp, we got checked in, set up and off to the showers. The owner, Jennifer, was real nice! And the showers, they were the cleanest that we’ve ever seen in an RV Park. They’re even cleaner than some hotels we’ve stayed! She takes pride in her camp and is very proud of it. They’ve worked very hard and been open for 3 years now!
(Their cute office and “rec” room buiding and our “diner” for tonight!!)
(Our campsite behind the office building.)
We used their TV room which had a big table and lounge chairs to have our dinner. The wind has been blowing pretty good outside and it was a pretty warm day. Still have been checking on this weekend’s upcoming storm. It’s supposed to arrive sometime Friday evening and last through Saturday!
We got lucky today. Tomorrow we head to Springfield, 74+ miles, and one of the Springfield area Warm Showers requests we made last night at the hotel came back saying that we’d be able to stay at his place! He’s fairly close to our route and further more, he’ll be heading out of town Friday evening for a couple of days, so, we’d have his place all to ourselves! The only caveat, just feed his two cats a couple of times a day! Piece of cake! So, we’ll look to meet him at his place tomorrow afternoon after he’s off work to get the lay of his place. That’s so cool of him to do that!! One less worry for tomorrow and Saturday.
A good weather day tomorrow for most of the day. We just want to get to our host’s place ahead of the storm.
Until our next post….
Fay's and Rob's Epic Journey #4 