Nature & Neon

March 28, 2026 — Day 4

Cracker Barrel, Fenton, MO — Route 66 Bowl, Chandler, OK

What a great day we have in store for you. We’ll talk about it all but what struck us the most as we were getting ready for bed was that today was just a fun day. It started with signs of spring right in our face!

If you want to go on adventure, you gotta gas up! We can’t believe we’ve never gotten this shot before. It may be spring on the calendar but it was pretty chilly this morning so we’re still wearing winter coats.

Susan really enjoyed this really wide load passing here. Just look at the smile on her face! (susan here: I’m not particularly fond of wide load trailers passing me so that’s actually intense concentration!)

We thought it was “When pigs fly.” Apparently, moose fly too! This image is from Google maps:

We’ve seen this strange carving before and we finally figured out what it is.

There is a road at the base of that, that’s how they carved away the cliff face to make room for the road. It would be cool to find an old photo from before the road was put in. (susan here: not that this is a hint for Paul’s brother John. Nope. Not at all.) This is in the Mark Twain National Forest and the water is the Little Piney Creek. It looks delightful to paddle. The only drawback would be the constant sound of traffic.

Next is the Tracker boat factory in Lebanon MO.

There must have been a half mile, or more, of boats. We’re guessing Spring is the busy time for new boat sales.

This is Redmon’s Candy Factory. Just like Buc-ee’s, The Big Texan in Amarillo and South of the Border just off I-95 in Hamer, SC we’ve been seeing billboards since we were about 100 miles out. Curiously, they just talk about candy, not the name of the store. (susan here: one thing I’ve noticed about these kinds of places is that their billboards are all roughly the same graphics style. Perhaps it sets expectations? Who knows.)

This fuel truck for airports on a flatbed passed us. The front is asymmetrical. There’s a small driver’s box that you can’t see from the passenger side. We had just passed it when it was entering the highway.

Curiously, another passed us a few hours later, we’re not sure if it was the same one or is there a factory nearby.

We’ve been doing off/on ramp driver changes. There are very few rest areas out here. After one change we looked out the window and saw this. It is the sign for an auto parts store.

There was a police officer playing leap frog with us, staying behind, then passing and staying in front. We figured out his game though, he was doing mobile, not stationary speed enforcement. Speed limit was 75 mph, so just how fast was that guy going for the officer to pull him over?

Sheep now not boats! But they also stretched for miles.

In all of our travels, we don’t ever recall seeing a Greyhound bus. Now we have.

80mph? Minimum 60? Yikes, Paul had had trouble maintaining 60 on the hills.

We made it to our destination, Route 66 Bowl, a Harvest Host in Chandler OK. We needed something fun after all the Beast Mode days. It was extremely colorful inside.

This is the view from our barstools. Paul had a Shiner Bock, he doesn’t like most beers any more, but Shiner Bock is pretty nice.

This was only about a tenth of the signs and neons in this room. We ordered pizza and Corn Nuggets. Corn nuggets are made of sugar corn, with sugar, clumped together somehow, then breaded and fried. OMG, so good, we almost forget to get a picture, here’s the last half one left. (susan here: it’s made of corn so it’s healthy right? LOL)

The pizza was amazing. It’s always a crap shoot to find good pizza on the road. This was superb. We got extras for lunch the next day.

More neon and signs.

Paul walked the leftovers back to Clifford, took this shot of the location.

We wanted to bowl but all the lanes were full. So we went off to the arcade and played several games poorly but had great fun doing it.

This racing game was fun, we raced against each other and some bots. Susan had to take a break between runs because it was making her dizzy.

We hated this machine, we both didn’t know how to play and lost in about 5 seconds. Game over. Bye bye $2,

We went back to the RV to play games and wait for the band to start, and you know, we had such a great time playing games we never did go back inside.

Susan won the first game, and Paul won the second one.

More neon before bed…

Daily: 438 miles

Total: 1,678 miles

Driving miles/Day: 420 miles/day 

Overall miles/Day: 420 miles