Getting our kicks on Route 66~

Yesterday was travel day, we finally got out of Kansas, crossed the wide Missouri, and ended up near Litchfield, Illinois, just down the road from Springfield. Rt.66 crosses highways in Litchfield, so we went down it a ways...it looks like a narrow frontage road these days, nothing like the "MotherRoad" in its heydey.
Anyway~we spent the night at the Kamper Kompanion Campground, rather than a parking lot, enjoyed hot showers, shampoos and I whipped up a breakfast casserole to bake this morning before we headed out. (Have I mentioned how nice convection ovens are? They don't heat up the joint, and I don't have to give up precious drawer space to a regular oven because the convection oven "lives" inside the microwave!)
We talked with my brother Mike this morning, and decided to head back to Indiana a little early, and forget about going to the Lincoln Library Musuem in Springfield. Thank goodness we decided that because an extra 80,000 people were in Springfield this weekend for the 6th Annual International Route 66 Mother Road Festival & Car Show! Egad, can you imagine trying to find parking for a 32 foot RV, with a car behind it, with 80,000 extra people downtown! Jim used to deliver books to Springfield for the bindery and knows this area well. On the outside of town there is a national treasure, famous on the old Rt.66 road, called Cozy Dog In. Cozy Dog is the home of the one and only Cozy Dog; a hotdog on a stick...yep, corn dogs!
We had a couple, and a cherry pepsi (Mike, I thought of you...) The joint was packed with boomer bikers, out for the festival no doubt, wearing Rt.66 t-shirts, and like us, out for a nostaglia fix. Check out their website: cozy dog
Later~when we hit central Illinois, we stopped near Monticello, IL., at the Monticello Railway Museum,(off Interstate 72,exit 166) where you can ride vintage passenger and freight trains on the former Illinois Central and Illinois Terminal trackage. Trains depart from the Nelsons Crossing depot. The ride, an hour long, took us downtown to the depot there, where folks could get out for 10 minutes or so, before going back in the other direction...from whence we came. Jim and I climbed up the rail ladder in the caboose and sat up in the cupola, sitting up high to see a better view of the tracks than the engineer had. Cool beans!! We had the best seat in the house. Three kids, ranging in age from 15, 10 and 5, joined us up there, and it's a toss up who enjoyed it more. Afterwards, we went through the railroad cars that had been refurbished, and was the musuem part. The mail car was the most interesting for me. It's amazing how they sorted the mail, lightning fast, with 97% accuracy, and then threw the mailbag out the door when passing a depot in towns throughout the countryside in Illinois. We saw berths set up, private compartments, and all sorts of interesting things that the railroad buff would enjoy seeing and reading about. (That would be Jim, as many of you know by now!) Another nice experience. The corgis stayed in the motorhome, with the generator running so the A/C would run....they are a tad spoiled.
The day was going into early evening by the time we left, so we went on to Champaign-Urbana, another of Jim's old stops on his bindery route. We ate supper in a bright red round barn, up a curving flight of stairs... a unique and very unusual building for a Famous Dave's. We saw a photo of the original farm site, with houses quite close to it. Today, it's all shopping plazas surrounding the barn. Progress?
Tonight we're at the Wal-mart in Urbana, there's a nice breeze blowing, so no generator needed to run the a/c. We're finishing up our Sue Henry (Alaska mysteries) paperbacks, and kicking back, following a full day of fun. Jim said we only went 150 miles today...but yesterday it was 375. We'll get back to Manchester sometime tomorrow, and begin the laundry/cleaning/unpacking/back to reality crap.