Route 66: Beetles at Devil’s Elbow
Beetles lined up outside the Devil’s Elbow Inn
Route 66, Morning Day 3: Morning in St. Louis
We’ve got a long leg of the journey today (400 some miles), so some of the meandering and sight-seeing we did yesterday won’t work today. The plan is to pick some of the major sites along the way, like Merimac Caverns and the Big Blue Whale.
We have some advantages in that we’ve done part of this leg before for my cousin Sarah’s wedding, so we’ve seen a few of the small attractions and photographed some of the “Big Things” before.
There’s also a group that’s going to deviate from the plan and see the arch, and the car stonehenge and such. We haven’t decided whether to join them or not yet… we’ve already seen the arch.
I can hear people packing the cars up outside, and Stephanie’s showering now. We’re almost ready to hop on the road. I hope we can find some breakfast and coffee….
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.
Route 66: Did I say 5 other beetles? I meant 12
We finally pulled into the motel at 11 Chicago time, and saw a huge row of beetles lined up; very fun. Too dark to take photos.
Traffic in Chicago sucked hard, but we managed to get into town, finally. We parked in a scary-ass parking garage with the steepest ramps I’ve ever seen, and went to the Summerfest in Lincoln Park. It wasn’t terribly impressive; just a bunch of junk booths selling knock off purses and clothes, a way-too-loud lame band, and the thing we came for – about 6 Smart ForTwos, which we got to test drive.
The we walked down Clark street and ate dinner, then headed out to Joliet to meet everyone else.
At some point, my cell got confused and started sending all my twitter messages through chat, and I couldn’t figure out what was going on on my end; very strange. Hence the strange twitters.
Way past my bedtime.
Day 1 Photos:
Smart cars in Chicago
Test drove Smart cars in Lincoln park, ate dinner. Now headed to Joliet to meet caravan.
Pod o’ Space behind us….
Pod o’ Space behind us on the road.
