US-50 West 2022:
Day 1 - Owensville


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US-50 West 2022: [Day 1 - Owensville] [Day 2 - Dodge City] [Day 3 - Cañon City] [Day 4 - Colorado NM] [Day 5 - Great Basin NP] [Day 6 - Folsom Lake SRA] [Day 7 - Lassen Volcanic NP] [Day 8 - Humboldt Redwoods SP] [Day 9 - Portola Valley] [Day 10 - Pinnacles NP] [Day 11 - Yosemite] [Day 12 - Sequoia & Kings Canyon NP] [Day 13 - Picacho Peak SP] [Day 14 - Flagstaff] [Day 15 - El Reno] [Day 16 - Heading Home]

Saturday, October 1, 2022: Let's pick up where we left off twelve days earlier. We had completed the first part of US-50 from Ocean City, Maryland, to Seymour, Indiana, and it was time to complete the route. We loaded Claire in the van and left the house a little before 8 AM. She had been at our house overnight for a visit, and we were taking her back to her house at Green Hills before we headed west. First stop was at McDonald's for breakfast for the three of us. Photo taken by Debbie who was temporarily sitting on the floor of the van since we were out of seats.
By 8:30, we had dropped Claire off and were headed south. There is still construction on I-65 in downtown, so to get from north side to the south side, you have to either go all the way around the city on I-465, or you have to take surface streets through downtown, which is what we did. We hardly ever go downtown, so we got to see this Indianapolis Colts/Marvel collaboration banner strung on the skywalk to the convention center, ...
... and to see these colorful sculptures near the on-ramp to I-65 south. We initially thought they were leftover construction debris, so we were very surprised to realize they were brightly painted sculptures of mushrooms.
Less than a minute later, we saw this sculpture sticking out of a tree as we sped south.
At 9:30 AM, we were back in Seymour, Indiana, on US-50 West, right were we had left off our westward US-50 journey twelve days earlier.
Unfortunately, while getting back into the van at a rest area, Debbie had stepped on her laptop. Normally, this wouldn't be a big deal, but in her haste to leave the van, she had closed the laptop with the mouse between the screen and the keyboard. This resulted in a very colorful but cracked and unusable screen.
Fortunately, Debbie always travels with her IT staff, who took an immediate detour to the very conveniently located Walmart right off US-50 in Seymour, where they purchased a replacement.
Less than an hour after arriving in Seymour, we were continuing our westward journey. This mural identifies Seymour as the "Crossroads of Southern Indiana."
Hey, Oktoberfest starts today! Too bad we don't have time to stay because we have other places to be.
US-50 took us through Lawrence County, which is apparently home to three astronauts: Gus Grissom, Charlie Walker, and Ken Bowersox.
We passed a field that had a herd of longhorn cattle. Check out these horns!
A mural in Bedford, Indiana, emphasized the town's ties to its three astronauts.
This ancient sign was at the eastern end of the bridge over the White River in Shoals, Indiana. The plaque notes that the stone was part of the original bridge built in 1880, which was the first bridge over the White River in Martin County.
We had seen this Indiana's Historic Pathways sign throughout the Indiana portion of US-50, but this time it looked brand new and was more orange than yellow. Maybe it is a new design, or maybe this one will fade to yellow over time like the others.
The water tower in Loogootee, Indiana, proclaimed that it was the home of Jack Butcher, Indiana's winningest basketball coach with a record of 806-250. Congratulations, Coach Butcher!
Debbie has many things that she tries to photograph on road trips, and one of them is oil rigs. She tries to get a picture of one in every state. Here is one from Indiana.
Near Vincennes, Indiana, we stopped at Captain D's for lunch. They were featuring lobster rolls which were about 2% actual lobster but 100% delicious.
A short while later, we crossed the border into Illinois.
This sign announced Illinois Wildflowers, but we weren't sure exactly where they were supposed to be.
Debbie was using the Roadside America app and learned that Olney, Illinois, is famous for its albino squirrel population. Sure enough, their "Welcome to Olney" sign declares them to be the "Home of the White Squirrels."
We took a quick detour into town, passing this cool old theater building, ...
... before getting to White Squirrel Drive and ...
... Olney City Park. This is supposed to be the best place to look for the squirrels, so we thought we would do a quick drive through and hopefully see some.
Unfortunately, we only saw one regular squirrel before we headed back out to rejoin US-50.
There were plenty of white squirrel statues, logos, and other images around town. They are proud of their white squirrel heritage.
As we drove along US-50, we noticed that we were driving alongside an abandoned roadbed, with cool brick bridges, ...
... like this one that had long been taken over by the trees that grew along the highway.
The old road crossed several iron trestle bridges that were blocked off, including this one over the Little Wabash River.
There were some great old-style motel signs along the way, including this one for the Continental Motel, ...
... and this one for the Lakewood Motel.
In Salem, Illinois, we were forced to detour around the town center due to the Little Egypt Festival 5k Run-Walk.
Further west, we were both taken by the Sandoval Community High School. It was a gleaming white building, with amazing detail on the entrance to the auditorium on the right, and the gymnasium on the left. We could tell that's what they were because it was engraved right on the building in a classic Art Deco lettering.
Check out this cool suspension bridge just to the north of US-50.
This small town had booster signs up to show their support for their athletes. The boys and men on the football and soccer teams were listed by their last names, ...
... while the women and girls associated with volleyball and cheer were listed by their first names.
This continued with the coaches as well. Even subtle mysogyny is still mysogyny. Come on, people. Do better.
We were again detoured around a closed downtown, and this one involved what looked like arts and crafts stalls on the main street. There was an enormous grill right behind the road closed signs.
Twenty minutes later, we were able to see the Gateway Arch in downtown St. Louis, and Maersk containers in the foreground.
That's the Mississippi River, which means ...
... that we are in Missouri.
We detoured just a little bit to the LEGO Store in West County Center, ...
... where they had this Black Panther mask model in the front display. We hadn't seen that one before, so it might have been released today.
Debbie started her analysis of their Pick & Build wall. It was the first of the month, so she was curious if there would be newer content.
There was a section of Halloween-themed bricks, but we had already seen all of them in previous stops.
She settled for a small Pick & Build cup this time, both because we were running low on pieces to buy and because we wanted some of the smaller cups. Debbie is planning to use the cups in our LEGO room for organizing things, and the different size cups will come in handy.
We were back on US-50 headed west, enjoying the different scenery in this part of the country, including these solid rocks blasted away to allow the road through.
We slowed down as we approached Rosebud, Missouri, both for their road construction, ...
... and to admire their "Welcome to Rosebud" signs on every street post and utility pole in the town.
We headed just south of US-50 to the town of Owensville, Missouri, to Memorial Park.
This city park has a campground that you can only book by contacting City Hall and paying by phone, which may explain why were were the only people there. That was just fine with us. It was a gorgeous campground with water and electrical hookups shared between campsites.
We got the tent set up, got all of our gear transferred over, and celebrated with ice cold drinks. It had been a long driving day and we were looking forward to a little downtime.
Shortly before sunset, we ventured over to the toilet facilities, which were pretty nice. There were two bathrooms, and both had electricity, a well maintained and clean toilet, a sink, and a shower. The shower was just a showerhead between the toilet and the sink that emptied into a drain in the floor, but it was nicer than the vault toilets we've seen an many other campgrounds.
Isn't that a lovely campsite? Here's Tom's picture of camp, ...
... and here's Debbie's picture of Tom taking a picture of camp.
Dinner was rehydrated rice and roasted chicken, which was surprisingly delicious.
Tom spent some time trying to get essential files off of ...
... Debbie's broken laptop, and succeeded in getting everything Debbie needed for the trip even though the screen was becoming increasingly useless.
Debbie spend some time transferring her files over, and we both smiled when the screensaver showed a view called Rocky Mountain Sunset in Antelope Canyon.
There was no rain forecast that night, so we slept without the rainfly. We really enjoy being able to look up through the mesh material on the top of the tent while we are going to sleep and seeing the stars and the moon.

Day 2 >


US-50 West 2022: [Day 1 - Owensville] [Day 2 - Dodge City] [Day 3 - Cañon City] [Day 4 - Colorado NM] [Day 5 - Great Basin NP] [Day 6 - Folsom Lake SRA] [Day 7 - Lassen Volcanic NP] [Day 8 - Humboldt Redwoods SP] [Day 9 - Portola Valley] [Day 10 - Pinnacles NP] [Day 11 - Yosemite] [Day 12 - Sequoia & Kings Canyon NP] [Day 13 - Picacho Peak SP] [Day 14 - Flagstaff] [Day 15 - El Reno] [Day 16 - Heading Home]

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