The Start (or end) of Route 66. This is a photo of the three
travelers (Bob, Randal, and Larry)...filled with anticipation of the journey ahead.
The starting point is across the street from The Art Institute and
offers a view of the gorgeous Chicago skyline - with the streets
near empty on this early Saturday morning.
And Bob takes the lead, getting us through the maze,
while all the while following the designated Route 66 Historic Byway.
A restored diner located in Gardner, IL.
They were dancing in the streets to a band playing on the
roof of a building on Main Street as we passed through.
Day two. Overnight in Pacific, Missouri. Headed west.
The rain that passed through the Chicago area late yesterday afternoon presented us with a light fog as we departed our motel. Travel to downtown was via interstate with light traffic. Bob was awaiting our arrival and we quickly made it to the start of Route 66 near downtown.
We did a loop around around the block and then picked up Adam Street and then we were smoothly across the Chicago River, and just like that we were on our way. We passed through some sketchy neighborhoods, but the traffic remained light and we did not encounter any slowdowns along the way out of the city.
There is no "one" Route 66. The many segments of the road are composed of pieces of the road from several periods of time. Some roads were closed, others opened, traffic was re-route, or in many instances new roads were built. We saw many examples of an abandoned roadbed paralleling our travels along the current rendition.
We passed Statesville Prison before arriving and passing through Joliet. In this immediate area we saw several early 20th Century Service Stations, nearly all of which were restored to some form of their earlier glory (?) as a place for fuel, "service" and hard work for those working there.
The roads zigged and zagged along much of the route, through residential, downtown business, and industrial areas without pattern. The Kankakee River was flowing like rapids (Bob's description - and it was) as we passed over it....caused in large part from the heavy rains of the previous day.
We passed through small towns with familiar names, where the pre-summer days had liberated the masses to do things in the local parks, go to the municipal pools, stroll the streets, gather outside for reasons probably unknown to those there, and certainly to those of us passing through. We saw rallies of classic cars, and others following our route. Most of those that we recognized as being on their own Route 66 adventure were travelling in our direction. We were surprised at the number of people outside, especially in the morning part of the day as we traveled farther south in Illinois.
Our goal for the evening was to be west of St. Louis for the evening. Our overall goal is approximately 300 miles per day. We banked some distance and time for another day by travelling over 350 miles today, most of which were the zig-zag pattern mentioned earlier. That makes for a slow forward progress, but is part of the process to see as much of the old road and as many things possible within the time allotted.
A recapping of today is not complete lest I mention the rain. We experienced rain on several occasions throughout the day, but never continuous. The showers would emerge, and then go away. We donned the rain gear a number of times, and always stayed "mostly" dry.
This was our first ride together, for the three of us, and we were a little out of sync in getting our routine down, hence we failed to get our room reserved for the evening and when finally found rooms it was late, which cause us to get to bed late, How late? 11:30. Thus the reason for not getting this on the blog last night.
Another good day.
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