Route 66 Continues : Illinois / Missouri

The next day we continued on Route 66, alternating occasionally with the highway just to keep moving past towns with not much in them. Because I don't have my journal entries on me right now, I don't specifically remember what happened on that day. So instead I'm going to guestimate and talk about the next set of photos that I have ready for this blog.

As you can see, we've started to decorate our mascots, though they don't have names yet. If I'm remembering the days correctly, one of our first stops was the Jesse James wax museum. Matt was almost named Jesse James, so he has a special affinity to the name. We visited the gift shop and talked with the woman in there for a while, but decided to skip the museum itself. Next door was a Toy Museum, but it looked closed so we kept on our way.

We stopped for lunch in a cute little town called Atlanta and ate a diner called Palms Grill. It was packed for lunch, although the town was crazy tiny and I swear the whole joint when dead quiet the second we entered. A kind older gentleman asked us if we were doing Route 66 and suggested we visit the museum next door, which we did. After a short video about town a woman took us upstairs to the towns museum which included a lot of Abraham Lincoln memorabilia.

 Despite being f ull from lunch, I insisted on stopped at the Cozy Dog a short couple of hours later because I love love love corn dogs. I know they are terrible for you, but they are the best State Fair food ever. The corn dogs did not disappoint and I only wish we were heading back that way for more.

Our next stop was Henry's Rabbit Ranch in Stanton, IL, a famous Route 66 stop. As we were poking around and taking photos, a Volkswagon Rabbit pulled up and the man that runs the shop opened up for us to take a look inside. He sold us a Route 66 book that we've been using to navigate and a decal to put in my car window.

From there we made a crazy dash to St. Louis to hit up a camera shop before they closed. Matt's lens had broken the day before and he wanted to replace it. We literally arrived minutes before they closed. From there we went across town to the famous St. Louis Arch which is an absolutely amazing thing to see. It's almost impossible to describe the pure scope of this monument, you really have to see it for yourself. We oogled outside, then went inside to visit the gift shop and see the Museum of Western Exploration which was pretty nifty. Circular in shape, the museum went through the ages from the 1800's up showing old wagons, stuffed animals like buffalo and photos of famous explorers. It's a fun free visit if you're at the arch.

Our final stop for the day was a hotel just outside of St. Louis. We crashed a little later than planned and fell asleep almost immediately.

Stay Tuned for Day 4 when we saw the original Mater and an absolutely gorgeous theater under restoration!

Route 66 Begins: Illinois

 We started Route 66 in Wilmington Illinois instead of Chicago for a few reasons. Mainly, we just didn't feel like driving into the city. Chicago is it's own adventure and we've both been there, so we decided to skip the busy, windy city and start a little farther south. But first we stopped at a Giordano's because Matt was craving stuffed pizza and apparently theirs is the BEST!. I've been corrected, it may or may not be the best but you can only get it in or near Chicago.

Anyway, I'm not a fan of pizza, so I wouldn't know anyway. :)

After lunch and a quick trip to Michaels for markers (to decorate our mascots) we headed to Wilmington for our first stop on Route 66 - The Gemini Giant. The Giant is one of the most terrifying statues I've ever encountered. His face is just plain creepy, but it's cool to see nonetheless. The Giant stands guard in the parking lot of one Launching Pad eatery, where we shared a delicious Chocolate Marshmallow Milkshake after taking our photos.

 Route 66 is very cool in that it often parallels major highways, but then diverts off into cute little towns, sometimes bigger towns, and takes you down residential streets as well as not so residential streets.We drove down beautiful tree lined streets, took sharp turns near broken down gas stations and just had a nice little drive. The clouds were out in full force and eventually the rain hit. By this time we were about ready to crash anyway, so we found our hotel and were in for the night.

Today we continued on Route 66 and saw a lot more interesting things, but that's a tale for another day.