There are a lot of ways to see Route 66.

This view might be the most fun.

Afternoon thunder roared in the distance as we unloaded three kayaks and prepared to launch into Roubidoux Creek. I paused to look up, not so much at the storm clouds, which would offer only a glancing blow, but at the giant piers that supported twin bridges over this creek.

The bridges carry traffic along I-44, and they’re the great-granddaughters of the Route 66 bridge we’d float beneath downstream.

On this day, the navigable part of Roubidoux Creek begins here, beneath the Mother Road amid the pillars and concrete sprayed with graffiti and littered with trash. We spent a few minutes deciphering the prose...and picking up some of that trash.

Then we hit the water.

As we launched our kayaks, over our heads we heard a hundred cars pass, their passengers unaware that we were about to float Missouri’s second-most overlooked stream.

For almost a mile the water twists and braids past brush piles and gravel bars and blue herons thick as mosquitoes around their rookeries. We flowed into the heart of Waynesville. Yet we never really saw the town. Not from the creek. Buildings and buzz and hubbub rose around us on both sides of this waterway. But from the water, our view was pastoral.

Roubidoux Spring gushed at us from the right, roiling from beneath a giant concrete wall where a dozen young brave souls jumped into the cold waters. The spring doubled the volume of Roubidoux Creek and lowered the water temperature 20 degrees.

We approved.

A kayak floating Roubidoux Creek is like a blood cell coursing through an artery. A lot of activity happens outside this conduit, but you don’t see it. And it doesn’t see you.

We paddled past dozens of locals along the stream bank. Kids swimming. Adults relaxing on their lunch break. Off-duty soldiers from nearby Ft. Leonard Wood were fishing...right here in this hidden waterway through the middle of town.

And then I looked downstream.

In the distance the old Route 66 bridge arched high over our path, as it has for eight decades, looking like an old Roman aqueduct with the original mother road coursing over the old span’s back through the heart of Waynesville. But drivers only catch a fleeting glimpse of us, if they see us at all. I waved at them anyway.

On our right were ball fields and soccer fields and fitness trails. Or so I was told. All we saw was green vegetation and clear spring water. We passed a giant pipe pouring thousands of gallons of purified water into the stream. That water used to be sewage. But treated, it’s drinkable, I’m told.

It looked clear, smelled good.

We paddled downstream as another thunderstorm shook its fist, blared at us, then twisted off to the north. I became aware that we were coursing beside another highway, draped along a ledge a few stories above the water level. Occasionally, through the trees, I could see motorists. I waved. They didn’t see me.

But during the hundred times I’ve driven this same stretch of Highway 17, my eyes were always sweeping this creek. I would’ve seen me. I would’ve waved back.

It ended too soon, abruptly dumping us into the Gasconade River at a picturesque spot beneath a towering bluff. As we carried our kayaks up a steep bank, I turned to say a silent prayer for the mudpuppies who struggle to survive beneath these waters. And I said goodbye to the second-most overlooked stream in Missouri.

Next time you’re driving along old Route 66 through Waynesville, look down as you cross Roubidoux Creek. I’ll be waving.

See more at JohnDrakeRobinson.com/blog. His books, Coastal Missouri and A Road Trip Into America’s Hidden Heart are available at independent bookstores and online booksellers everywhere.