Tulsa to Saint Louis and back

[bugo]

I attended the roadmeet in Saint Louis last weekend.  Here are some notes:

I-49 is fully signed along I-44, as is US 71.

I drove through the original Death Diamond at I-44 and MO 13, and it is terrible.  I was only able to navigate it because I had read about it.  I can see it causing mass confusion.

I-44 east of Springfield is a terrible road.  It is very curvy for an interstate.  Contrast it with the Will Rogers Turnpike in Oklahoma which is nearly perfectly straight.

Truckers in Missouri are assholes.  They cut me off several times to micropass other trucks. 

I-44 has been removed between the junctions with US 50.

Trucks are banned from the left lane of the six lane section of I-44.  This practice should be nationwide.

The new bridge in Saint Louis is underwhelming.  It's OK and far better than a flat bridge, but it's not nearly as cool as other bridges in the area.

I got to the hotel around 9:30 and roomed with Dougtone (who is 6'4", not 6'3" as he claims.)

The meet was a clusterfuck but we managed to make it the best roadmeet ever.

I didn't eat lunch because of medical reasons, but I made sure to take plenty of meat home with me.  My cats loved it.

Speaking of cats, Chloe was a brat for most of the trip.  She wouldn't stop meowing in the car, and she woke Doug and me up at 5:30 on Saturday morning.

Downtown Saint Louis was fucked because of the goddamn Saint Patrick's Day events.  Why such a racist holiday is still celebrated is beyond me and is offensive.

The Chain of Rocks bridge is great.  We parked in Illinois and walked to the bend.  It's hard to imagine two trucks driving through the bend at the same time.  The Chain of Rocks canal bridge is also very cool, despite being downgraded to a single lane.

IL 100 is a neat drive along the Mississippi River with bluffs on the east side of the road.

IL 16 has the stupidest end point that I've ever seen.  It ends at a driveway to a business just east of Hardin.

The Hardin bridge is cool.  It's actually a lift bridge and is in excellent shape with brilliant green paint.

We headed back to the hotel for, ahem, refreshments.  They played a card game but I dropped out and talked to Tim.  I would have preferred we sat around and bullshitted.

I dropped Tim off at the bus station at around 3:30am and began the six hour trip back home.  It started raining around Pacific and rained all the way to Catoosa, where it started snowing.  Marc left around 9am and by then I-44 was slick and there were multiple wrecks.  I'm glad I left when I did.  I did 80-85 most of the way home, which is scary when passing a truck which is spraying water all over your windshield, blinding you.

I took a short stretch of US 60-66-69 near Vinita just for the hell of it.  There is a very old 4 lane divided section of highway west of Vinita.