Well it's here. This is where Illinois left off and Missouri the second leg of the Route 66 journey begins. You'll start at Lambert-St. Louis Intl. (KSTL) and fly back to The Old Chain of Rocks Bridge. Here you will fly south along the Mississippi River following the path of the St. Louis Riverfront Trail to the Gateway to the West, aka. The Gateway Arch. I took the liberty here to veer under the Arch, it's entirely up to you if you want to try it or not, for a short jog into downtown St. Louis. Just past the Arch is WPT15 the Old Courthouse which construction began in 1839 - 1864. The first two trials of the Dred Scott case were held here in 1847 and 1850. WPT16 is St. Louis Union Station opened in 1894 and saw it's busiest time during the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, but this isn't a history lesson so you can look those up and read about them if you wish.

St. Louis has so many sights to see so you might want fly around and do some sightseeing before continuing. If I may backtrack a little now, just before WPT9 is McKinley Bridge, it too at one time was used as a river crossing for Route 66 and so was the McArthur Bridge from 1929-55. Why choose Chain of Rocks and not one of the others? No real reason other than you'll pass McKinley Bridge and the McArthur Bridge is south of St. Louis downtown having to backtrack north in order to fly through that area and to the Arch. WPT17 picks up where the McArthur Bridge would have led you, confused? Me too! At WPT17 you can fly just east and see the bridge if you wish.

Continuing on you'll pass over the sprawling St. Louis Metro Area. At WPT43 is your first real glimpse of something other than suburbs, Forest 44 Conservation Area, sounds like they thought hard coming up with that catchy name. WPT44-45 is Lone Elk Park owned by St. Louis County. On to WPT51-52 to the north is Route 66 State Park, some of you may remember a town named Times Beach, well this is the place. Those not familiar with Times Beach might want to Google it, very interesting. North of WPT56 is Six Flags Over St. Louis, here is where I leave you to carry on. There are so many points of interest in Missouri that you'd spend all your time reading instead of downloading and flying.

Springfield, Mo. does have something in particular I'd like to point out though, at WPT372, yes 372 and your still not done, is Park Central Square this is where J.B. “Wild Bill” Hickok and Davis Tutt had a shootout July 21, 1865 and is reportedly "The Nation’s First Quick Draw Duel", do I really need to say who won that fight?  From Springfield you'll fly west through many small towns and make your way to the Missouri-Kansas border. Your not still not done, now you'll fly through the entire route of 66 in Kansas, a total of thirteen miles, yep 13 miles is all Kansas got of Route 66. Here it headed south into Oklahoma. Luckily there is an airport at this spot in Kansas Walter A Swalley Airpark (78KS) your welcome to bed down for the night and refuel before continuing on through Oklahoma.

TIPS: It's suggested to fly low and slow since your following a route intended for automobiles. It will naturally twist and wind it's way through towns large and small so don't be to concerned about hitting each way point exactly, the idea is to follow the overall route and not take each and every turn, unless that's just your thing.

Plan on doing the entire trip from Missouri to Kansas, trust me, if you save the flight while your flying and want to resume later you can, only you won't have any way points to follow since it only loads the flight where you left off and that's it! This can be finished in a couple of hours depending on which aircraft you choose and how you like to fly, fast, slow, in circles etc.

Along the way you may encounter some terrain anomalies, this isn't caused by this file but the sim itself. You may wish to try and use Elevation Fixes - United States by Alpine Scenery found on this site. It corrects not only those you may see here but in your other flights as well.

INSTALATION: It's entirely up to you how you want, here are two possible ways.

Open the zip file and drag the ".pln" file into your "LocalState" folder within your MSFS2020 installation. That's where the sim keeps all your saved flights. Open MSFS2020 go to the world map, choose your aircraft and settings then load the flight plan and fly.

If you use Little Navmap, unzip the file to a temporary location then load the ".pln" file into Little Navmap and use the "Export Flight Plan as MSFS 2020 PLN" to export it into the sim, you can name this file anything you wish just so you will know exactly what file you want to load and not mix it up with another flight you may have saved. Then open MSFS2020 go to the world map, choose your aircraft and settings then load the flight plan and fly. Sounds more complicated then it really is this is the method I prefer since, as mentioned above, you can follow your flight and pause it anytime you see something interesting you want to know about such as a park, a mine etc. and hopefully it will be identified on the map. You can also edit your flight and save as it to whatever you want to call it, land at a certain airport, take a side trip to see your aunts house, it's your world have fun.

LINKS: Little Navemap

Historic Route 66 Turn by Turn - Missouri
This is where most of the flight plans and future ones used are from. It's also a great site to keep open and pause your flight now and then if you want to follow along, learn about some of the sights and why the route went the way it did and why some parts of Rt 66 were changed from the original. Of course this could make your two hour excursion turn into an all day odyssey!
Historic Route 66 Turn by Turn - Kansas

Elevation Fixes - United States by Alpine Scenery A world wide version is also available to download.

Photo's of the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair
I just had to include this link for the amazing images, well worth a look!

Get Your Kicks Above Route 66 Series:
#1 Illinois
#2 Missouri & Kansas
#3 Oklahoma
#4 Texas
#5 New Mexico
#6 Arizona

#7 California

STATS:
302 NM
482 waypoints
Thanks and I hope you enjoy getting your kicks over Route 66.