Hail, Hail Rock 'n' Roll

Day 1
Caught a Rock, Dodged the Hail

Postlude - May 29, 2011
One-day and multi-day trip reports usually have different formats on this site. "Cover pages" such as this are used to provide a trip overview and tie together the individual days of longer outings. One day trips don't need them. But at least one trip that was planned as a single day got expanded in progress and now the opposite has happened. The focus of this trip was getting to a Wednesday night concert but I had in mind another day or two of poking around St Louis, Route 66, and the National Road. Wind and rain made extra poking around uninviting and my dad's failing health made it unreasonable. I headed back to Ohio on Thursday morning.

May 25, 2011 (day 1)
I took the southern route to St Louis and touched just a small piece of Route 66. After somehow dodging some extra nasty weather, I found my thrill at Blueberry Hill.

Prelude - May 22, 2011
Chuck Berry's been playing Rock 'n' Roll since 1955 and he ain't done yet. The 84 year old showman continues to perform one Wednesday a month at Blueberry Hill in his home town of Saint Louis. I subscribed to Blueberry Hill's e-newsletter several months ago and saw show after show listed as sold out shortly after tickets became available. Most I couldn't attend in any case but the quick sell-outs did keep me from a couple. My schedule was clear for the May show so I grabbed a ticket when the date first appeared in the e-newsletter. Typically, the Berry show would have been sold out by the next newsletter but not this time. Tickets even remain available now, just a few days before the concert.

I'm not sure what that means, if anything. A New Year's Day show in Chicago did end prematurely because Chuck was suffering from exhaustion but his Blueberry Hill shows seem to have continued as scheduled. In fact, a report of the April show makes it sound like he was in great form. I'm all set to head west to see a legend on Wednesday.

I hope to leave early enough and use enough expressway to allow me to trace some of Historic Route 66 into and through some of Saint Louis. Hopefully I'll be able to check out more of the "things" in Kip Welborn's Things to Look for on Route 66 in St. Louis. Then, on the way back, I have visiting the National Road Interpretive Center in Vandalia, Illinois, as a goal.

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