The Rt 66 Mother Road Festival - Springfield

 Every year Springfield, MO hosts the Rt 66 Mother Road Festival. Our caravan happened to be in town for the event. As this is the 100th anniversary of Rt 66, the festival was planned to be even better than previous years. We did not attend the evening concerts, but we did go into town to view some of the 1,498 cars at the car show.  The center of town was blocked off to traffic and cars were parked along the sides of the streets on at least a dozen blocks. 

Check out the Matchbox Car on the air filter!

I HAD to take a photo of this car. 

Check out the 'badge'!

While we were in Springfield our group was camped at the Double J Campground in nearby Chatham. This was a clean, flat campground with great gravel roads and sites. There was a fun walking trail through woods and weeds. The girls enjoyed the curving trail, and loved coming upon a bunny that seemed to find a way to run through the weeds and miraculously show up on the next section of our trail! Here are a few shots of "the weeds":

The campground is next to a corn field. At our last campground we saw tall cornstalks one day, and the next they were gone. The harvesters had come in and worked through the night. In case you have never had the opportunity to stand next to a corn field, I took this shot so you can see that the corn really is as high as an elephant's eye! 

On to Pontiac...Illinois

We visited Pontiac, IL

We had a brief trolley tour around the city to see some historic sites and to learn about some of the murals. 

There are 24 murals depicting the history of Pontiac. 

Bob Waldmire painted this map mural in the Rt 66 museum in Pontiac.

He painted murals in many locations on Rt 66.

This map was never finished. Bob died before he could finish painting the truck,

which you can see penciled in between the print of the grain elevator and Towanda.

Here are a few other murals around town: 

In addition to the murals, the town has cute cars and trucks along many sidewalks.

These were the result of an art collaboration. 

Pontiac constructed an open air plaza in mid town. 

The sign was created to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Rt 66.

It was made to look like signs of yore.

As we left Pontiac we stopped at few gas stations

that once served customers on the mother road. 

 

Ground Zero - Rt 66

 The start of Rt 66 

Our group at the Navy Pier in Chicago

This isn't really where Rt 66 began, historically,

but there was a suggestion that Rt 66 should go from Pier to Pier.

We enjoyed Chicago Style Pizza at Lou Malnati's..

home to the BEST* deep dish pizza in Chicago! 

*so they claim!

The next day we were at Lou Mitchells,

A famed breakfast venue at the terminus of Rt 66. 

Our group took up quite a bit of space! 

We had our pick of quite a few variations of omelettes...

My ham a cheese was rather tame. 

We took an architecture tour by water and learned about many of the buildings in Chicago

Chicago skyline 

My favorite building was the St Regis, designed by Jeanne Gang.

This is the tallest building in the world designed by a woman. 

One bedroom condos in the building begin at $950,000!

The black band near the top of the highest tower is open to the elements.

This allows wind to flow through the building.

That, and huge tanks of water on the floors above help mitigate swaying of the building. 

We traveled to the 103rd floor of the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower)

This is Chicago from 1,353 feet!

And this is me on "The Ledge"! 

Of course, we had to stop and see "the Bean"

(Formally known as Cloud Gate)

Can you find my reflection in the bean?

My favorite thing at Millennium Park was the Crown Fountain.

We waited...

and waited...

and finally:

Adventure Caravans - Day 1 - Route 66

We are traveling with Adventure Caravans  on our 7th "adventure".  We have met with 23 other RV's in Kankakee, IL for a 53-day tour of old Rt 66 on its 100th anniversary.

On our first day we met for a "social" and dinner at our home base for a few days at the Kankakee South KOA RV Park. Our fellow travelers are from various locales in the US. (More about that later!)

The next morning we boarded a bus for a visit to Joliet, Elwood, and points in between to see some of Rt 66.  Here are a few pics form our day:

Joliet Prison

My journal entry for the day:

Here I am, cruising on Rt 66!

At the Joliet Historical Museum

Visiting the Gemini Giant

At the Medewin National Tallgrass Prairie Visitor's Center

A photo op in Elwood....south of Chicago.

The gas station image under my elbows was the station

you can see behind me in the picture.