It’s Not Me, It’s Him, Right?

Day #2 – Illinois Bugaloo

Well, the theme of forgetting stuff continued.  Only this time, it was not right in front of me.  I forgot my medicine.  After a very expensive trip to the pharmacy, Susan and I were off to visit the wonderfulness of Route 66 in the Land of Lincoln.

Leaving Joliet, we finally start to see the ruralness of 66.  Woo, a big spaceman.  Picture time.  Woo, an homage to Betty Boop and James Dean.  Picture time.  The Route 66 Museum in Pontiac.  Stop off and browse, plus picture time.  Look at the clock and the odometer.  We’ve done 75 miles in 2 hours.  May have done the schedule wrong, we’re not getting to St. Louis until Tuesday at this rate.

But before I move on, I feel for the town of Pontiac.  They are trying to revitalize their entire downtown based on Route 66 tourism.  This looks like a bad idea.  We were the only visitors to the museum.  A trolley waiting for people to drive through downtown sat empty except for a very lonely driver.  There’s a reason nobody wanted the Museum or the trolley, they didn’t work when they existed on the route, and they’re really not going to work when it’s 8 blocks south of 66.

Later in the day, we stopped in Atlanta, which knew how to do tourism right.  Big statue of Paul Bunyan.  Fine.  Octogonal library.  Check.  Grain “museum”.  Works for me (for about 3 minutes).  And then there’s the Palm Tree Inn.  Because when you think of central Illinois farm towns, you think Palm Trees.  I was also introduced to but did not partake in the concept of the ponyshoe, which is a slice of bread, a meat, covered in fries and then a cheese sauce.  An old me would have eaten that in a heartbeat (which likely would have been my last).  Instead, we ate sensible and moved on.

After my usual trip to the Lincoln Burial Site to coincide with the FIFA World Cup, we realized we were a little short of time and needed to do a quick freeway jaunt to catch up.  As soon as we got on, they closed the freeway for 30 minutes to take care of an accident.  Oops.  We get back on the mother road, stop at a bunny-themed attraction that the proprietor was nice enough to let us go in after hours for a few minutes, and we moved on to St. Louis.

Plan here, and only plan here, was the Arch.  Problem #1 – Cardinals game starting in a hour.  Lots and lots of traffic.  Problem #2 – Recent high waters closed a key road to promptly getting to Arch parking, so had to park farther away.  Problem #3 – Because of problems 1 and 2, could not get to the Arch before they stopped taking elevator rides.  So, to drown out our disappointment, we had some nice concrete at Ted Drewes.

Before turning in for the night, we had to have something resembling dinner.  So we stopped at The Lion’s Choice, I had the okapi and Susan had the zebra.  Apparently lions like their food real salty.  We’re staying the night in Cuba, have yet to find any plantains.  Tomorrow’s “highlight” will be an off-66 trip to Branson.  Sadly, Andy Williams does not perform in August, but we’ll have to settle for Your Huckleberry Friend, an Andy Williams tribute show.