Road Trip: 10 Cities in 14 Days: 1 & 2

Get your kicks on Route 66

DAY 1 & 2 : Route 66
Lincoln and Springfield

In April, I introduced this trip here.

Route 66 starts in downtown Chicago. We planned to pick it up outside the city. 

We dropped Rennie and Rebus off with Martini & Teddy, their favorite Westies, all four running like demons ("Bye! Don't come back too soon!") and were on the road by 9:00 a.m., eating orange scones and coffee, heading on I-70 to Indiana and beyond to get onto route 66, singing "You go to St. Louie and Joplin, Missouri..." little did we know what Joplin would hold for us. 

"I am a sucker for any song that name-checks American towns regardless of whether it is logical or good. It is debatable whether 'Route 66' is either, but we belt it out every time."

 --Sarah Kendzior

But first, the only town to name itself after Abraham Lincoln while he was still alive: LINCOLN, ILLLINOIS.

Day 1 Lincoln, Illinois! A political star arose!

"I will prepare, and some day my chance will come."-- Abraham Lincoln, starting out

Postville

Lincoln rallying the people

The Old State Capitol

We arrived to see Postville, a replica of where Lincoln practiced and the famous watermelon monument, denoting the place where Lincoln served watermelon to the town when they named it after him. (I did not ask Paul to pose eating a fake watermelon. His idea.) A Korean War monument. We had planned to visit  the Lincoln College's museum on Lincoln, but found it shuttered since 2022. It had its highest enrollment ever in 2019-- and then Covid. No word on what happens to the museum. We visited the train depot, still active with both passenger and freight trains, and then  the Old State Capitol (not a replica) where Lincoln rallied people in his run for Senate.

We picked up cold food at Aldi's and ate in our room at the Hampton Inn-Lincoln, which was nice and a lot cheaper than Springfield hotels, and little did we know, a lot better for our health.

Day 2 Springfield, Illinois: I turned 75 today!

Back on route 66, we have a short drive to Springfield and after a short walk around town, went first to the Lincoln Museum, where we watched a movie, "In His Eyes" with a lot of strobing and exploding that kept kids in the audience interested. But we were most interested of a map titled "The Civil War in Four Minutes," where we watched how the battles moved and the number of soldiers died in speeded up time. We watched it over and over. War in four minutes. 

By Amos Oliver Doyle - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

 

 

I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him. -- Abraham Lincoln

From there, we went to the Presidential Library with two exhibits of interest to me: Special letters , which I loved, since letters and diaries were really the first writing I ever did. And then The Stevenson Room, on behalf of my maternal grandparents who loved Stevenson and voted for him twice and felt his loss was due to the fact that he was too intelligent for the American people. I bought a whole lot of tchotchkes I didn't need in the gift shop, blueberry gummies and blueberry tincture and magnets and a 
book bag and postcards. 

It was that time of year when teachers are trying to keep instructing their students and students are going nuts with the end of the year in sight, and that day the lesson for grade schoolers was LINCOLN, and the nearby playground and train station and shelter were mobbed with kids scooping up the stacks of bag lunches. It reminded me of my first grade field trip from Whipple Grade School: a train ride! My mom, the train engineer's daughter was so happy, and so was I. So were these kids.

On and off all day, it rained, but we walked the streets anyhow, found a sweet Obama site.  We tried to visit the Frank Lloyd Wright Dana House, but it was shuttered tight, despite the fact that every/thing/one (including the Lincoln Library) saying it was open. If I had only known-- how did I not know??-- we could have seen Vachel Lindsay's house, I would have made reservations there. 

This being my birthday (Paul's is coming up in 4 days), we made a reservation for the historic Maldaner's restaurant downtown. Neither the one vegetarian dish posted online or a different one posted in the window was available, so Paul had to pay for  a plate of scallops on risotto, hold the scallops. I had duck which was good, but I wondered if it was undercooked because I threw it up (vigorously) in the middle of the night. Or it might have been our waiter, who seemed not to like us. (He even corrected my Spanish pronunciation as he passed by and I was speaking to Paul and not to him.)

After my midnight upheaval, I experienced an allergic reaction, which we soon realized was caused by the feather pillows, which both of us are intensely allergic to and made arrangements ahead of time not to have but in fact, did have and only discovered at 1 a.m., when we stripped the bed and slept on a towel. Paul mentioned it very quietly the next morning to the manager of the Hilton Doubletree, not even lodging a complaint or expecting any redress, but she looked horrified and apologized and returned a lot of our money. And after all, you can't keep us from having a good time. And we dress up nice, huh?

And we were back on the road for day three: Mark Twain's Hannibal!!

 "Route 66 will turn 100 years old in 2026." --Sarah Kendzior

"Better see it while you can!" --Diane and Paul