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Published: November 17th 2008
Joliet Route 66 Museum
Jerry hanging with the Blues Brothers (or does that make it the "booze" brothers)Finally - Back on the Road
...And it feels so good. We finally left Saturday, November 8th after finally receiving a part for Jerry's scooter. We were expecting it Tuesday and since we had to stay to vote anyway, thought that would work out to leave by Thursday. Oh well, we're on the road now and that's what counts. The part arrived at 1:05 and we were already on the road at 1:40pm (we were more than ready!). Even with the drizzling rain and cool weather, it felt great to be back on the road. We are armed with plenty of books and information about Route 66. Many thanks to Susan at AAA for her insights and information.
Playing catch-up already
We are already on Day 9 and just now starting to post. This trip is very different trip to our last one. By the time we get through a day, have dinner and do some planning for the next day, we've been too pooped at night to post. So, now, we're going to try to play catch-up as quickly as possible by combining some days. We'll include pictures in chronological order which will help folks follow
Must be Chicago Area
Have to pay tolls and deal wtih construction how we got to where we are. Hopefully, we'll be able to catch up quicker than we've started posting. We'll post days 1-3 together, then days 4-6, and then either start daily or continue grouping. It'll all depend on how our travels go. We go with the flow 😊 We're also not going to do maps for this trip. For one, some of the daily route maps we did for the previous trip have somehow disappeared from those days and also, Route 66 is too difficult to try to plot on the map. So, we'll simply place city/state in our captions instead of maps. A couple reminders about the viewing our posts -- If you subscribe, you will simply get an email everytime we post something (we understand there is no unwanted spam coming through to those that subscribed previously). You can double click on any picture for a larger view of it; our captions will be on the right and you can go through the pictures in that larger view using the picture number or arrows at the top of that view. You can avoid having to click the page numbers when using that view.
Day
First Historic Route 66 Sign
We began southwest of Chicago, opting to skip downtown Chicago 1 - Saturday, November 8th - Home to Joliet, IL
We had already decided to skip downtown Chicago. We've both been there and at one time or another, seen the important bits and pieces of what would make up the downtown Route 66 components. In spite of that and avoiding travel on 294, we still had tolls and construction. It just wouldn't be Chicago vicinity without it.
We hooked up with Route 66 and headed through Romeoville, IL to go on into Joliet. In Romeoville, we saw the white fence but somehow missed the White Fence Farm. There was supposed to be a white fiberglass chicken on a flabet truck parked outside. Oh well. We did see the Stateville State prison. We have no clue what it's like inside but wow, the outside didn't look anything like a prison. The grounds are a huge, well-manicured expanse and looks more like a prestigious university. We didn't catch a picture of it...you'll have to take our word for it.
The books we had to guide our trip suggested a couple of side trips as we headed to Joliet. Given how late we left, we quickly decided to forego them. It
Joliet Route 66 Museum
Lobby Display of old car was close to dark when we arrived in Joliet. We made a stop at the Joliet Route 66 Welcome Center. What a treat. They were about to close so we didn't get through their museum but the lobby and gift shop were enough to give us the Route 66 feel. Rita bought a cool Route 66 ball cap and with some other tidbits and additional info, we headed for a hotel. The Hampton Inn chain is a very strong supporter of Route 66 and we know Jerry does well at Hampton's so we opted for that for the night. It worked very well.
Day 2 - Sunday, November 9th - Joliet, IL to Springfield, IL
Joliet is full of Route 66 things to see. Most are visible from the car. You can see some from the pictures we took. There was probably twice that. We realized quickly we couldn't (or shouldn't) take a picture of every single sight. We took more than we shared here and know we still shared a lot. Joliet also has a walking tour that gets you to even more Route 66 things to see but we opted not to take it in
Joliet Route 66 Museum
Map display inside lobby lieu of getting on the road. A couple of tidbits to share about Joliet that folks might find interesting from the literature we have (we'll share credits in our trip summary at the end of our trip)...
- The first Dairy Queen, established in 1940, was in Joliet. It was actually "taste-tested" two years before in nearby Kankakee.
- Rialto Square Theater is a restored 1926 vaudeville theater and contains the largest hand-cut chandelier in the US
- The Joliet prison was made famous by the Blues Brothers and the television show, Prison Break
- There are five historic gas pumps scattered throughout downtown - Texico, Mobil, Standard Oil, Sinclair, and Shell. We saw all five - only pictures of three
As we left Joliet, it was incredibly obvious this would be a completely different trip. Two-lane highway, no road shoulders, no services, and best of all, no traffic! In Wilmington, we found the Gemini Giant at the Launching Pad Drive In. He is one of many that were formerly "muffler men" and used to populate highways back in the 50's and 60's. Some owners customized them and in later years, the oversized mufflers in their hands were
Joliet, IL
Rita taking a break on one of the car couches at the Joliet Route 66 Museum and Visitor Center replaced by something else -- a model rocket in this case. The Gemini Giant is one of three in Illinois. We'll see if we find all the other two.
We made our way through small towns Braidwood, Godley, Braceville, and Dwight. Illinois has Route 66 signed quite well so not too many troubles staying on route. We were enthralled with old buildings, gas stations, houses, etc. Some refurbished as Becker's Marathon Station (1933), previously and on the National Register as "Ambler's Texaco." Other sites we took in are covered well enough in the pictures. We had a great home-style breakfast at Old Route 66 Family Restaurant.
We continued through Odell, Cayuga, Pontiac. We spent some time at the Route 66 Hall of Fame Museum in downtown Pontiac. It was a treat. It walks you through the history of the whole route with many historical artifacts. They also had a military display of uniforms, etc. upstairs, all housed in an old firehouse from years gone by. The whole town was a treat. We began to realize how much time stops like this would take. We would need to start being more selective.
We continued on through Lexington, Towanda
Joliet, IL
Standard Oil at Route 66 and Lincoln Highway and on into Bloomington. Lexington had an actual "Memory Lane" but it was closed to auto traffic and way too rough to take Jerry's scooter out. We followed the old route 66 whenever possible and what would turn out to be too often, we followed both the earlier and later versions of the route. We found and stopped at almost all of the little things along the way - old gas stations, the Dixie Truckers Home in McLean, the Bunyan Giant, the Giant Hot Dog, old mills, and other things We went through Shirley and were disappointed to find that there was no more "sirup" to be had in Funks Grove. The Funk family has been tapping trees and making what they call "sirup" for well over 100 years. A sign greeted us that they were sold out for the season.
We continued through McClean, Atlanta, and on into Lincoln. We found Giant Abe in Lincoln, beginning to realize that "giants" of all kinds would be a part of traveling Route 66. We moved on realizing how late it had gotten and between the concerns for finding a place for the night, and how little distance we had travelled,
Joliet, IL
Shell replica gas pump at Route 66 Park we very reluctantly jumped on I-55 to get into Springfield, vowing to avoid doing so in the future. We got into Springfield late, had dinner and tried to figure out a better way to approach the trip.
Day 3 - Monday, November 10th - Springfield, IL to St. Louis, MO
We spent the morning touring Springfield. Both of us had been there but neither of us had ever spent anytime seeing the Lincoln sites and there was some Route 66 things to see as well. It was great and we'll let the pictures speak for our Springfield tour. We realized once again that we had spent more time than expected just touring around. We were both starting to get anxious about how to manage the trip such that we could see everything, yet make enough time to get where we had planned to be. Although we have planned a month, that includes major side trips to Sedona/Jerome and Bryce Canyon and seeing friends and family in states on the return. So, we really only have about two weeks...and we haven't even left Illinois yet!
We continue through many little towns, seeing many little sights. Pictures will have
Joliet, IL
Texaco replica gas pump at the Rialto Square Theatre to again suffice. Later in the day, we confirm our earlier suspicions of running too late and know we really need to make St. Louis. So once again we jump on I-55 for the hour to get to St. Louis. Both of Rita's parents are originally from St. Louis and there is family there we wanted to stop and see, especially an Aunt and cousin who have more often stopped in Milwaukee to see us than we have made it to St. Louis. We are happy to find that we will be able to see her and two of our cousins for lunch the next day. That will be awesome. Rita talks with one of her brothers (Charlie) and ironically, he reminds her that years ago, when we were children and our parents brought us to St. Louis for family visits, we actually traveled Route 66 from Chicago to get there - I-55 didn't exist back then. Oh, how quickly the years pass.
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Jan Holter
non-member comment
Happy Times
Monday, Nov. 17 Hi Jerry and Rita. So glad to hear from you and get an update on where you are. And now reading of your travels, I find out you are in the "backyard" of where I spent my childhood. I grew up in Morris, Illinois - and lived there until age 18 when I went off to college - so have many fond memories of Illinois - and the places you mentioned. We got home from Orlando on Saturday (15) - after a wonderful 12 days down south in the warm weather. Picked up a cold on Saturday - possibly from the enclosed air on the airplane - but who knows????