Missouri Motel
000 And dinner
Missouri Motel • Springfield, MO • Day Six
It has been a few weeks since my last post about the Route 66 trip, but if you have been playing along, you know that I recently got back from a trip to Pittsburgh with the NXNW crew. After that great trip, I was in the White Mountains with the family for a week. Sorry, no photos from the Whites — my camera was trained at the grandkids.
After that hiatus, I think its time to revisit images from the Mother Road. Or, in this case, close proximity to it.
Lindberg’s Tavern looked promising! (Photo by Mike Tully)
Our resting spot after the fifth day of the trip was Springfield, Missouri and, like every other day, we looked forward checking into our hotel, grabbing a good meal and a cold beer. Both destinations were determined on the fly by someone who was not driving. On this particular day, Mike Tully found Lindberg’s Tavern online. The oldest tavern in Springfield, MO, with a western vibe, looked like the perfect place for dinner and a drink after a long, productive day of photography.
After checking into another nondescript, industrial area, big name motel, we plugged Lindberg’s address into the GPS machine and eagerly hit the road. The route to Lindberg’s took us through an area of downtown that looked like a ghost town — two solid blocks of the city that looked abandoned for decades. The highlight was be Missouri Motel, which appeared to be everything any of the motels we stayed at weren’t — rich in style and character.
As we continued on to Lindberg’s Tavern, we all agreed we’d start Day Six photographing this block of Springfield.
Lindberg’s unfortunately turned out to be a bust for us. It clearly had all the frontier charm the website teased, but Thursday night was live music night. The place was packed, the music loud, and it was rocking. The band sounded great. We put our name in for a seat, but were warned that, with the live music, we were in for a long wait. On to Plan B: a place called Big Whiskey in downtown Springfield.
Big Whiskey was a chain restaurant with a cookie-cutter menu and really, really bad service. How bad, you ask? Rick ordered a BBQ burger — a basic burger with bacon, caramelized onions, and BBQ sauce. The rest of us ordered similar sandwiches, right off the menu — nothing fancy — and received our meals in relatively short order, Rick’s burger took a solid 25 minutes to prepare and deliver. And they got the order wrong. If it had bacon, it was missing the onions and BBQ sauce (I don’t exactly recall).
Rick called the waitress, sent the burger back. The chef came from the kitchen, apologizing profusely, assuring Rick that his correct order would be his priority. Since we were one of two parties at Big Whiskey, we assumed “priority” meant soon. We were wrong. Another twenty five (!!!) minutes passed before the food runner emerged from kitchen and delivered to Rick his burger. This time it had the bacon and onions bacon, but no BBQ sauce. The rest of us had long finished our meals, so Rick asked for a side of BBQ sauce to top off his burger.
Yes, dinner at Big Whiskey was a disappointment, but the next morning photographing the Missouri Motel and adjacent building was a big win. Day Six was off to a great stary.
Missouri Motel
000 About This Series
From April 12 through April 20, 2025, I was on a Route 66 Photography Adventure (The Trip) with three good friends and like minded photographers. This series is recap of The Trip in stories and images.
All of the images were shot on that historic road or within a couple of miles of it. Neither the images nor stories are necessarily presented in chronological order.
Enjoying the series? Drop a comment.