Route 66, Day 2: Chicago to St. Louis
I had some trouble getting my bluetooth connection to the internet this evening (this motel 6 in St. Louis doesn’t have wireless) so I don’t know if I’ll be able to upload any of the 212 photos I took today.
We woke up this morning and met the rest of the caravan, took tons of photos in the motel parking lot. Most of the people going have some seriously tricked-out cars; lots of cool paint jobs and graphics. Then we gassed up and headed out down Route 66.
First we stopped at the Joliet Route 66 Museum and Howie got them to open, even though they were closed on Mondays. We did a big circular drive photo op, bought Route 66 merchandise in the gift shop, and took off on the road. We had a blast traveling; we communicate with the rest of the caravan using FRS radios, so there’s lots of conversation and joking around between the cars, and a big line of beetles really catches the eye of everyone we pass.
We visited the Launching Pad restaurant and took pictures of the Gemini Giant, then stopped at a antique gas station in Odell. After that we visited another giant Paul Bunyon statue, then drove on to Springfield, Illinois and stopped off at the Cozy Dog, the birthplace of the corn dog. Tasty and very charming, but pretty greasy.
Along the way we picked up 3 more travelers, and stepped on the gas to get to St. Louis, because we meandered quit a bit along the way. Heading into town, we visited the Chain of Rocks bridge, which used to be the bridge over the Mississippi into St. Louis. It’s now closed and you can walk across it. After a big photo op there, we went to Drewes Frozen Custard for ice cream, and headed to the hotel.
I’ll attempt to upload some photos to flickr and add them to this post – we’ll see how it goes.
Update – it took over an hour to upload 20 photos, so I think I’m going to call it a night. I’ll try to upload the rest of the pics when I have a real wireless connection somewhere.
