2014-10-21 Travelin' Day to St. Louis

After 5 days at the Illinois State Fairgrounds parking lot we are moving further south along Route 66 to St. Louis today - about 140 miles. Ours is the Silverback 5th wheel.

60 miles down the road in Litchfield is the Ariston Cafe that was closed yesterday. So we left a little late this morning so we could stop there for lunch. The lady at the museum told us the desserts were so good we had to come back. There was a sign inside that confirmed her story.

I had pork over bread over mashed potatoes covered in gravy. Karen had a cheeseburger.

And the Apple Pie with nuts and caramel WAS delicious as promised.

Here's a very cool looking, restored 1926 gas station in Mount Olive called Soulsby Shell Station. He only sold Shell gas for more than 65 years.

Oddly, the building was never big enough to service a car inside so they had to do oil changes and such outside. What they DID do inside was television and radio repair. Huh?

The place was open but no one was there. It's a museum and gift shop now.

How do you describe Hare It Is in Staunton, IL?

This guy LOVES rabbits - both the furry ones and the automobile ones.

It's a gift shop made to look like a gas station.

The owner was there and we talked about 15 minutes about his rabbits and his rabbits. He has a story for each of them. The furry ones all have distinct personalities. The car ones have to be cut in half and put in the ground so that the local city will consider them "art" while he parts them out.

Henry's Rabbit Ranch is a great place to stop and chat along the Route.

Time for some shopping at the Pink Elephant Antique Mall in Livingston, IL.

They have everything the Route 66 traveler could possible want.

Muffler Man? Check!

Giant Tricyle? Check!

Space Ship? Check!

Shirtless Boy Wonder with an ice cream cone and a pet elephant? ??? Check!

...and a huge antique mall on 3 levels inside an old high school gymnasium that Karen would have liked to spend another hour or two in.

We pulled into Hamel and found another Route 66 marker. I pulled off to the side of the road about 100 yards past the marker and Karen went back to get the picture.

An old gentleman from across the street walks over to the truck and says, "You know, that's a very special place right back there. This is where the trolley tracks used to go right down the middle of this road. Went from St. Louis all the way to Peoria."

We chatted for about 10 minutes while light traffic whizzed by behind him. He was 74 and lived here when Route 66 was alive before the Interstate.

There was this old garage/service station next to my truck. The guy's friend had bought it years ago to preserve the building and he turned it into a single stall car wash. These are the interesting people and great stories you hear when you stop on the Route.

2014-10-20 Big Ol' Loop Trip on the Mother Road

Yesterday we took the day off. We went to a nice church in the morning. There was a disc golf course within walking distance of the RV so I went and played alone in Lincoln Park. Karen wanted to go for a walk so we walked around the same park for 3 miles. In the evening we went and saw Brad Pitt's new movie, Fury.

When we were making plans for the Route 66 portion of our trip we decided that hauling the 5th wheel through every small town on the route wasn't going to be comfortable.

So we came up with the idea of dropping the trailer off where we were going to be staying and then backtracking if necessary to more thoroughly visit a town. We did this with Atlanta a few days ago.

We'll be traveling down the I-55/Route 66 section without the trailer today and going 60 miles south to Litchfield and then returning north via a portion of Route 66 that is further west and is now part of Hwy 4.

We found a covered bridge along the way.

There are plenty of old motel that have gone by the wayside. Art's Motel and Restaurant is one of them.

The Ariston Cafe in Litchfield has been here since 1928 and was previously on the older section of Route 66.

Across the street is this brand new museum, The Litchfield Museum and Route 66 Visitor's Center, with tons of Route 66 memorabilia. The "Vic Suhling" sign was from the gas station that was originally on the land. The museum refurbished it and left it there. How cool.

Remember these? Who knows what they are?

Litchfield really likes to play up their roots to the route. It's good for business.

Further south on the road was the old Belevidere Motel and Cafe.

They STILL had a working Drive In Theater in town.

Heading over to Route 4 and Carlinville we now proceeded to head back north to Springfield.

This town has about 150 Sears Catalog Homes that are still standing from 191. They were funded by the Standard Oil Company for their workers. It cost the workers about $7,000 for each of the homes.

From Zillow I had a list of the addresses of houses that had recently sold and some that were for sale. They sell anywhere from $45-60K.

Building on the side of the road.

Some towns will do ANYTHING to promote themselves. There are turkey tracks in the Route 66 cement in the small town of Nilwood. Yes, it's a big deal around here, and yes, we stopped.

We went into Girard looking for Doc's Soda Fountain, established in 1884, to get an ice cream because we hadn't eaten in, like, 10 minutes. We're looking at the memorabilia in the place and taking pictures like usual.

The shop has another seating area to the right and we walk back there and find more stuff to see and read about. A guy (Robert Ernst) from the next office space over starts talking to Karen about the Presidential Museum  pictures on the walls (yes, the one we were just in yesterday!).

This guy was a furniture and drapery guy and he had the contract to furnish all of the drapes in the Lincoln Presidential Museum displays! Robert owns The Furniture Doctor and his wife Renae owns Renae's Window Fashions.

Lincoln's funeral drapes

He had books with blue prints in them about the specifications on how the drapes were to be made. He talked and consulted with Bob Rogers, the former Disney Imagineer, who headed up the Presidential Museum project. It was just so very cool to have visited the museum and now to meet this guy who had so much to do with it. What are the chances?

As we go closer to getting back home we found an original Route 66 road with bricks still on it. Most of the old brick roads have been painted yellow. Oh, wait, that's a different story. Most of the brick roads have been paved over with asphalt.