The Road Goes On…

Category: Illinois

Southern US Trip Summary

This morning at home we feel as though we are living between two worlds. Before we enter back into our everyday life with all its responsibilities we look back on six and a half weeks of excitement and adventure. We’re happy we did write the blog so that we don’t forget all the things we saw and experienced. It definitely is a trip to remember and does rival our Route 66 trip from two years ago.

What worked well:

WIND Mobile’s Unlimited US Roaming. We’ve been WIND Mobile customers for a number of years now and their price just can’t be beat. For $15 a month we had unlimited voice calling, texting and 1GB of data while in the US. This allowed us to keep in touch and look up things on the road.

Good Sam Membership: This RV club membership cost $25 a year and give you 10% discount at member campsites. It definitely paid for itself.

America the Beautiful Pass: This $80/year pass gives you free entrance to US Parks and other recreation sites. It paid for itself as well.

Garmin GPS: We love our Garmin GPS system. At the start of the trip we had the RV/Trucking dezl 760 model but it was stolen in Albuquerque so we bought a nuvi 2689LMT to replace it. These GPS units have campground locations pre-installed and provide lots of information on arrival times, traffic conditions, etc.

Allstays Camp and RV App: We use this app on our iPads all the time to look for campgrounds. It shows the location of campgrounds and gives information about their rating, facilities and distance from your current location.

NOAA Weather Pro App: This app for the iPad and iPhone shows a map with weather conditions. It also has the ability to send alerts to your phone when severe weather is nearby.

Visitor Centres, Park Rangers and Bureau of Land Management offices: These are always a source of great information and have invaluable knowledge of local conditions and opportunities.

Frugal RV Travel Guides: These guides have great route information as well as tips on inexpensive places to stay overnight.

Here’s a map of the entire trip. This is an image grab from Google Maps as it wasn’t possible to use the entire GPS track on a live map, probably because of its size.

August 26, 2015
Newton Kansas to Cloverdale, Indiana

Wow, US states just fly by when you’re on the Interstate and there isn’t much to see. We decided to make this a pure driving day to make it as close as possible to Indianapolis for a visit with Kevin Raber tomorrow.

Our campground for the night was interesting to say the least. It was a tucked away, old, treed park with inhabitants who seem to have lived there in their decrepit, permanently parked trailers for a long time. The bathrooms were old as well, but we were happy to smell the bleach when we entered the facilities.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

August 24, 2015
Ashland, NE to Portage, IN

After an 11 hour sleep, we departed for Des Moines, Iowa to visit Famous Dave’s for a rib lunch. We had visited this restaurant last year on our trip home and were looking forward to the best ribs anywhere.

As soon as we walked in the door, the manager, Kevin, exclaimed “Hey, our Canadian friends are back!” and we knew we were in the right place. We had a three hour lunch with spare ribs and back ribs and lots of conversation.

We felt very welcome and took home some Famous Dave’s seasoning and received some Rich and Sassy BBQ sauce from Kevin. Around 3PM we departed and had a long way to go to make our 700-800km goal.

Needless to say we were tired when we stopped at a Flying J truck stop in Gary, Indiana for the night. This is a very large truck stop with 200-300 trucks and two parking spots for RVs. We got one of them next to the store. A speaker constantly announced “Shower customer number 201, your shower is now ready. Please proceed to shower number 6.”

There was no way we could sleep through this all night so we finished our last night of the trip as we began our first, at a Walmart parking lot. By now it was almost midnight.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

August 13, 2014
Bourbonnais, IL to Dundas, ON

This morning Martin had a wonderful idea! Since we missed out on the Drive-In Movie Theatre experience on Route 66 he suggested to go to a 50s Drive-In Theatre on our way back home in London, Ontario. Therefore, the driving day home was not all desolate but had a great ending at the drive-in with hot dogs, fries, coke, popcorn and two movies. A lot of fun and early Saturday morning we will be home.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

June 21, 2013
Lincoln, NE to Bourbonnais, IL

It was supposed to be a pure driving day again today, but as usual it didn’t turn out this way. Despite the fact that the highway driving was a bit labour intense due to high winds and lots of trucks we made good progress – 848kms. One good thing about the mid-west states is that there are no mountains and everything goes a bit faster.

Iowa, as we found out, has great ribs. In Des Moines at Famous Dave’s we were looked after really well by wonderful future globetrotter Chelsie (aka Brittany if the service is bad) who explained the different kinds of ribs and sauce options to us in detail. We tried quite a number of them and they were all really good. We let Kevin, the manager, who came by our table know that Famous Dave’s is now our favourite rib place.

After chatting inside and outside for two hours we were back on route to try and still make it to the Polk-A-Dot Drive-In for another of the great strawberry milkshakes we had had at the beginning of our Route 66 adventure. We made it there at 8PM, the posted closing time, but the restaurant was still in full swing and the large milkshake dinner was at least as good as it had been 3 weeks ago.

No RV park was open by the time were were done, so Walmart parking lot is was, yet again.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

June 20, 2013
Lincoln, IL to Eureka, MO

Left Camp-a-while campground after a quick cleaning of the RV and went to see Lincoln. Missed the old Mill restaurant right away but did see Postville Courthouse, a replica. Lincoln did frequent this court as lawyer and the Deskins tavern across the street to meet with colleagues for lunch and stay overnight.

At the former site of the burned down famous Pig-Hip Restaurant and Motel we only found a plaque and an empty lot.

In Williamsville we had a wonderful hour at the vintage gas station at 117 N. Elm. The owner is a collector of everything and anything collectable and even has a small section with household goods. The die cast auto section however was a bit disappointing, the kittens however in the old truck made up for this.

In Springfield we peeked through the fence at the fine collection of car related ‘toys’ at Shea’s service station. Too bad it was all fenced off.

As the capital of Illinois Springfield gives tribute to Abraham Lincoln in a big way. We visited the tomb and rubbed the nose -as so many did before- of Lincoln’s bronze bust.

Time for lunch at the Cozy Dog Drive-In. Ed Waldmire invented these corn dogs while serving military duty at Amarillo, Texas and established a small chain of eateries in 1949 at the same time as the first couple of Dairy Queen’s in Springfield with corn dogs as their specialty. Corn dogs are hot dogs fried in batter. And yes, they are really tasty.

A nice chat with some of the other patrons followed about the economy in Springfield after the manufactoring sector left the city. After taking a quick picture of the old sign of the former Art’s Motel at Farmersville and of the Sky View Drive-In Theater, which is still showing double features on Friday, Saturday and Sunday since 1951 we visited the Ariston Café, had great cake and got our picture taken behind the bar by the owner. It is a family business still today.

Yet another old gas station came our way in Mount Olive, the Russell Soulsby Shell Station, followed by Henry’s Rabbit Ranch in Staunton, which will not offend vegetarians and make German eyes smile!

Another drive in visit in Mitchell, the old Balair, was followed, and yes, there is a pattern, by another café, the Luna Café.

The Chain of Rocks Bridge was our last item on the Illinois agenda and it was a bit of a scary one. This bridge carried in the old days the traffic of Route 66 across the Mississippi from Illinois to Missouri. Today the bridge can only be used by pedestrians and cyclists. We wanted to do the same, but auto glass on the first parking lot and a lot of young people hanging out in their cars and more people coming and parking next to our RV made us feel uneasy and we took off and started the Missouri leg of our trip.

A KOA camping spot in the Eureka area was nice an quiet after our trip through St. Louis where we did not miss out on Ted Drewes Frozen Custard, the predecessor of the Dairy Queen Product in Springfield.

© OpenStreetMap contributors

May 28, 2013
Kankakee SP to Lincoln, IL

There was breakfast despite the fact that we had 4 meals the day before. And off we went in the rain back to Route 66 passing by the Schutten-Aldrich House, an octagonal curiosity from 1867.

It is said that it sheltered runaway slaves as part of the famous underground railroad. Muffler man in Wilmington was next before we spent a good hour and a half at the Polk-A-Dot-Drive-In Restaurant.

First we admired the outside in the rain with statues of Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and the Blues Brothers, then we could go inside prior to opening hour and photograph the picture perfect interior.

We talked to one of the owners who told us that the first proprietor worked out of a school bus and then a small version of the restaurant was build.

Now it is a medium size place serving burgers, hot dogs, fries, ice cream, etc. and wonderful milk shakes, we can attest to that! We went on to drive the old Route 66 often parallel to I-55 and sometimes we could spot the even older Route 66, today in disrepair but still clearly visible at times. In Dwight we visited the Oughton Estate will library (former carriage house) wind mill and park.

The main building is a fine restaurant now, thank God it was closed on Mondays. From there we went on our gas stations quest: Ambler-Becker Texaco Station in Dwight, a retired service station nearby, the Standard Oil Gas Station in Odell, which even sells Route 66 pop today, which we had to buy and taste of course.

Here we found a predecessor of our RV, a tiny camper from 1953!

The quest for the oldest and most original part of Route 66 followed, in Pontiac, Lexington with its “Memory Lane” we were really close.

In Funk’s Grove we photographed an old railway station and store.

After this we headed for Atlanta, where we had a wonderful time at the Palms Grill Cafe, great food, good prices and really nice people to talk to.

On our way out of the Palms Grill Cafe we talked with Ruth-Ann, a wonderful 79 year old lady who told us about her volunteering at the local school as a “school grandmother” and her random acts of kindness gestures. She gave us each a happy face button and a small medallion. What a wonderful lady!

Now it’s time for bed at the Camp-a-While campground in Lincoln

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May 27, 2013
Van Buren SP to Kankakee SP

After breakfast, a walk along the beach with beautiful sand dunes and a power generating plant in the distance we finally decided that we had to start our Route 66 track right at the beginning, right downtown Chicago. Off we went to Chicago! The Interstates were fine, the 200km trip went smoothly. The toll routes to downtown Chicago were a bit stressful, the ticket machine ate the credit card, but thanks to a help button and a friendly voice on the other end we had it back quickly and could proceed. Wow, I love Chicago!!! The rails in the air, beautiful old buildings, art in the streets, restaurants, stores, all with a story to tell! And all decorated with US flags, it was Memorial Day Weekend after all. And thank God it was a Sunday which made the drive through the city with an RV possible.
Yes, we got the crucial shots: The signs of the beginning and the end of Route 66!

And we had a nice Greek lunch at Santorini’s and then dessert on top of it at Lou Mitchell’s Restaurant and Bakery, a downtown Chicago eatery since 1923 and a land mark on Route 66.

The first t-shirt was purchased 🙂

We left Chicago on Route 66, passed Castle Car Wash, Cindy Lyn’s questionable motel and ended up at the White Fence Farm in the Joliet area after passing by prisons onward on the older of the two Route 66 in the direction of Joliet, Elwood, Wilmington and Braidwood. The chicken outside was huge but nothing in comparison to the chicken dinner in the restaurant.

Most of it is now in our little freezer compartment in our RV fridge. Time to rest our weary bones! We ended up at the State Kankakee River State Park. We never got to see the river, it was raining so hard even Pepsi didn’t want to go out.

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May 26, 2013