The Anti-Climactic Finale

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28/04/07 - 29/04/07 Springfield - Chicago, Illinois

Evening entertainment in Springfield - not a yellow-headed, skate-boarding Matt Groening character in sight (One episode of ‘The Simpsons’ featured a close up shot of Homer’s driving license which read ‘Springfield, NT’ - a non-existent place) but a working 2-screen Drive-In so we parked up in front of the big screen, tuned the radio to the relevant FM station, grabbed a pizza, popcorn and sodas and settled down to “Bridge to Terabithia”. We didn’t see anyone get stranded Grease-style so no whispers round the school on Monday.

We bypassed the town museum and various monuments to it’s most famous resident - a certain prairie lawyer by the name Abraham Lincoln and scooted north where we popped into the Route 66 Attraction of Funk’s Grove, a Mecca for Maple sirup lovers - and despite this spell checkers insistence - it really is sirup with an ‘I’ for the product made with out adding additional sugar. We sampled some of the sweet stuff that kept us going till our lunch stop and chance to spot another piece of Americana at the Launching Pad Café, Wilmington.

The 5-6m fiberglass green giant stands in the café car park wearing a space helmet and cradling a rocket in his hands and if running the route from Chicago is the first real stopping point out of the big city. We had passed s similar giant holding a hot dog in Atlanta earlier in the day. Our guide claims another in Springfield that we had missed somehow.

Eventually, as all good things come to an end, so did our relaxing 2 lane highway through sleepy country towns, turn into the sprawling concrete of greater Chicago and with it route 66 merged onto the crazy I - 55 with some of the worst driving I’ve ever witnessed with SUV’s weaving round each other, crossing multiple lanes bumper to bumper at double the official speed. We arrived in tact and still following the brown 66 signs right into the heart of Chicago and snapped the anti-climactic and poignantly slightly broken and skewed ‘Route 66 Ends’ sign before turning onto the Magnificent Mile.

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Photos

...and with Rocket
At the Lauchpad Cafe