Road Trip Day 2 - Friday, 26th April, 2019

Say hi to Ruby - my trusty companion. She should be called Eva, as that is nearer to her license plate, but I didn't notice. It's a Kia SUV and an easy, comfortable drive.

Illinois is cattle country as well as corn, so here are some cows. However, corn dominates and the most conspicuous buildings in the landscape are the vast grain silos. The occasional spill provides a free meal for the locals.

Another "Giant" can be found in Atlanta, moved there from Cicero, Ill, this time clutching a hotdog. The town also welcomes visitors  with its friendly water-tower.

Both Atlanta and Lincoln have brick-built main streets, and the fabric of most is well maintained, presenting an attractive town centre. But many of the shops are boarded and vacant. The former stature of some of these Illinois towns, now by-passed, can be seen from the size of their public buildings, such as this.
On the whole, the route is well-posted with the familiar brown and white signs.  However, tracking down this unmissable piece of nonsense, which has been moved (how??) a number of times, resulted in a number of u-turns.

Another, younger, thinner, Lincoln stands, somewhat disconsolately, at the entrance to the State Fairgrounds. They were not in use, so I was able to drive around the fairgrounds unchallenged for a quite a while, trying to find him.

Afew miles further and yet another "Giant", this time advertising the Lauterbach tire service business, still in operation, in Jerome.

Apparently, he used to hold a full-size tyre in his right hand, which looked like a toy, but he seems to have lost it.

At Auburn is a rare piece of the original brick road, which makes the Munchkins' instructions to Dorothy (in the next State west) make a lot more sense. 

Route 66 took a number of different routes as it evolved, and a choice has to be made which to follow. As I had seen the town of Carlinville before,which lies on the original, northern 1926 - 1930 route, I detoured onto the southern, post-1930 route which goes via Farmersville.  They re-unite at Staunton. At Sawyerville, there is this personal monument, made up of Route 66 memorabilia.

After Staunton, I had the first real navigational challenge - getting lost in Granite City, which is not the most scenic of places, whilst trying to find a route into St Louis. Its name reflects its industrial past, and present, and is a maze of truck routes, railway sidings and industrial plants. I took the route advised by EZ, although not strictly on 66, heading south on 3 and onto I70.  This was a good choice, as it brought me quickly to my rendezvous point with my son, James (on the right) and his husband, Kolten, at the excellent Fountain on Locust. Time for a celebratory drink!

Three days of catching up - and the Avengers movie - before heading West again. 

Road Trip Day 1 - Thursday, April 25th, 2019

Stayed the night at a hotel near the airport, picked up the car and headed into Chicago, armed with Google Maps and the EZ Route 66 guide – both essential.

This photo, taken at the start of Route 66, is probably the most expensive ever.  It cost $20 to park for a few minutes nearby, as stopping on Adams Street is impossible. Finding Adam Street is in itself a mission, but if you are aiming for the whole hog, no point in skimping at the outset!

Once on Adam Street, exiting Chicago is surprisingly easy – just follow Adams and then Ogden south and west and watch the skyscrapers disappear in the rear-view mirror. The area you traverse has clearly seen better days, with vacant lots and defunct businesses, the remaining period houses like the stumps of rotting teeth.  Joliet is the first town where you can see iconic Route 66 memorabilia. Stop for an ice-cream and take a short walk from the parking lot and you can glimpse the Correctional Facility that features at the opening of the film “The Blues Brothers” – hence the figures on top of the parlour.

A little further on in Wilmington is the first of the “Giants” – huge fibre-glass statues that were used to advertise car body shops and became known as “Muffler Men”. The current name of this one was chosen by local school children to commemorate the Space programme.  

The Route is lined with gas stations and family-run restaurants; the gas stations are defunct but many of the restaurants survive as going concerns.  Some of the gas stations have been restored and are on the list of historic sites, such as this one in Dwight. 

 But not all have been so lucky. 

Towanda

Odell

I made my first food stop in Lexington at “The Shake Shack”, which is a favourite for the townspeople as well as tourists – a good sign. Here I met three charming locals – Bea and George Lowery and their friend Robert. The walls of the diner are covered in the signatures of travellers, so I added mine! 

I’ve been asked whether I set a mileage goal each day.  No – it’s a time goal.  Although 66 runs in parallel with the Interstates for much of its length, diverting to the many small towns along the way takes time, so mileage is not especially relevant. So, I start looking for somewhere to stay before it gets dark, heading for a junction with the interstate. Spent the night of Day 1 in a Super 8 at the junction in Maclean, Ill. 

Road Trip Week Minus 1

24th April 2019

Writing this on the plane bound from Washington DC to Chicago, Ill. having spent nearly a week with my daughter, Emma, on the magical island of Chincoteague on the Eastern Shores of Virginia, a 3.5hour drive from DC via US95, US 50 and US13. Turn off US13 at Chincoteague Road in Oak Hall and head east.

Within the first few miles, you will spot signs for “NASA” and the vast satellite dishes that sprout out of the fields. You are approaching Wallop Island, from which the “Antares” rockets are launched carrying the Cygnus spacecraft to resupply the orbiting International Space Station. There is a small museum which is worth a visit and a nature trail which leads to the waterside from which a good view of the launch area can be seen. The airfield in the area is also used by the military as a training base for pilots operating from aircraft carriers, each pilot requiring three thousand “touch-and-go” manoeuvres to qualify.

Separated from the mainland by an inland waterway, you approach the island across a long causeway, opened in 1922, flanked by miles of marshland alive with birds.  There are few pull-offs, which is frustrating for the queues of drivers behind me driving at 15 mph, but there is a boat ramp on the east bound lane and a couple of laybys on the west, from which can be seen ibis, both white and glossy, oystercatcher, laughing gull, great and snowy egret, Forster’s terns and the occasional bald eagle.  

The causeway ends at a crossroads. Turn left and you meander along the shore past scattered residences and the High School until you reach a dead end.  The High School hosts the annual Duck Decoy and Craft festival over the Easter weekend. Chincoteague lies on the Eastern flyway, the corridor through which thousands of migrating birds pass on their way to and from their winter roosts in the south. Many duck, geese and waders spend the winter on the Islands, which are relatively temperate. Duck hunting is still big business during the open season in winter and the waterways are lined with curious straw duck-blinds, which also provide ideal nesting places for ospreys in summer. The wooden, floating duck decoys, carved and painted to represent the various target species, were used to entice overflying wildfowl to land, the decoys promising a safe and abundant food source. You could then blast them out of the skies with ease. Duck Decoy Competitions are held up and down the East coast and the Craft fair is a showcase for this extraordinary American art form, where the best sell for thousands of dollars. A single block of wood is used to form the body, the head usually being carved separately and attached.  Some carvers delineate each feather by careful shaving of the surface of the block, to give a realistic texture, before painting the plumage of the species represented. A single duck can take more than forty hours of carving. There is also a display of other crafts!

Turn right at the crossroads, and you are in Main Street, the heart of the resident community, which numbers around 3000 but swells to ten times that during the summer months. It is this street which captures the essence of this extraordinary place.  There are two larger chain motels and or you can enjoy bed-and-breakfast in one of the older private cottages, including “Miss Molly’s” where Marguerite Henry wrote the children’s classic “Misty of Chincoteague”. There is a gas-station, and a US Post Office which is far too large, surely, for this tiny community.  There is a gourmet food store, selling international imports and local produce, but no supermarket. There is a library, and an excellent book-shop selling both new and second-hand books, as well as art-prints, in a vast labyrinth that spreads over two floors. The Island Roxy cinema opens on Fridays out of season and weekends at other times – but check.  Try their freshly popped corn. This Easter they showed “Fly Away Home”, and the following Friday “Saturday Night Fever”, in an eclectic mix of popular classics. There are three restaurants: Bill’s, an upscale, traditional American restaurant with the emphasis on surf and turf, which is full at 5.30pm and empty by 7.30pm (the Chihuly chandelier is a reproduction); Don’s, which is more casual and has an upstairs bar with live music and The Ropewalk which is modern American, with cocktails, and has a prime waterfront location from which you can watch the stunning sunsets. The remaining buildings house a variety of craft shops, of which the Flying Fish is the best and features local and national artists.

Continue straight ahead and you are in the seaside resort, lined with budget motels, surf shops and take-outs. The best of these are the Island Creamery, which has a permanent queue out the door, and Poseidon’s Pantry, which specialises in gourmet foods and takeaway deli sandwiches. Further east, if Woody’s BBQ is open, it is worth a stop. Keep going and you reach the bridge that links the Island to the Assateague NWR – 55 miles of barrier island stretching north into Maryland, with acres of marshland and pine forests, the famous wild ponies, the distinctive red-and-white lighthouse, and miles of unspoilt sandy beaches.   Beavers arrow through the water-filled ditches and, if you are lucky, you may spot the endemic, and endangered, Delmarva squirrel, a variant of the Eastern Fox squirrel with silver fur.

There are a variety of walking and hiking trails and a driveable wildlife loop where you pass a bald eagles’ nest. During migration and in summer, the myrtle bushes are full of warblers and large flocks of waders skein overhead. You may see the snouts of turtles poking out of the water or find them lined up, in size order, on a sunny, half-submerged log.

To get close to the ponies, take a boat trip, as boats can access areas of the island off-limits to the public and the ponies often graze on the marshes close to the water. 

The ponies are owned by the volunteer Fire Company. The most popular time of year for visitors is the last week in July, when the wild ponies are rounded up, swum across the narrow channel from Assateague to Chincoteague and the foals sold at auction. This raises funds for the Fire Service and keeps the population to around 150, as limited by the NWRS. Accommodation for this period needs to be booked months in advance.

Chincoteague is a magical place, worth visiting at any time of the year to watch the changing landscape and wildlife.

Why 66@66?

I have visited the States many times since our first trip to New York in 1975, facilitated by working for British Airways for twenty-six years, which made travelling relatively cheap.  On that first visit, we expected nightly shoot-outs in the streets between the cops and robbers, our vision of America formed entirely through film and tv.  Instead, we found a city not unlike our own London – frenetic, commercial, noisy and architecturally stunning – inhabited by people linguistically and culturally familiar. However, there were apparently four murders within a few blocks of our upscale hotel, in a neighbourhood through which we had happily wandered late the night before. How a society could tolerate that level of gun violence was as utterly incomprehensible back then as it is to me now. And that was years before Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook and Parkland added a mental health crisis to poverty as a catalyst for extreme violence facilitated by readily available weapons of mass destruction. I am writing this at a time of an upsurge in knife crime in London, which is widely attributed to a lack of educational, cultural, social and welfare facilities available to the most vulnerable members of our society, caused in part by the austerity measures imposed by our current Government. There were 285 knife-related deaths over the past year. Imagine if those wielding knives had had access to guns. It is perhaps the terrible, defining difference between our two nations.

Anyway, gun crime was not uppermost in our minds on our subsequent visits. In the late 1980s, a chance meeting at San Francisco airport led to a lasting friendship with the Matthews family in Seattle and many vacations spent exploring the beauty of Washington State. In the late 90s, we met The Bradleys from north of Milwaukee and added Wisconsin and Chicago to our list of places visited.  We took the children to countless holidays in Florida and experienced Hurricane Charlie. In the early 2000s, my eldest son went to Harvard to study for a Masters and has never come back. He went on to gain a Doctorate and now lives in St Louis.  My daughter spent a year at Georgetown whilst studying for a degree in American Studies at Kings College, London. To date there are only six states in the US which I have not visited - Hawaii (my daughter has been there), Alaska, North Dakota, Nebraska, Vermont and Minnesota.

For a child of the sixties, Route 66 is iconic, familiar through music and film.  I had driven parts of it between Chicago and St Louis on visits to James, and other stretches in Arizona during a family trip around the South-West. The idea of driving the whole 2400 miles in one go began to take shape and I bought the EZ Guide book a couple of years ago. In June this year I will be 67. Driving Route 66 at 66 has a nice ring to it.  So, time was running out. The death of my husband Fred in August 2018 also brought home that putting things off until tomorrow is not a good idea.

It was my daughter that suggested I stay on after spending a week together on the East Shores of Virginia on Chincoteague Island, the subject of my first blog entry.  I then flew from Washington to Dulles, collected my hire-car and headed for the start point in downtown Chicago. Join me on the Ride along the Mother Road.