She kissed the hairbrush…

Sunday, August 29, 2021—Starting mileage: 35,250

[Aside: Randy wears his “Vietnam Vet” hat pretty much all the time. So far, it has saved us about $45 in admission prices! He doesn’t ask, the concessionaires just say, “Thank you for your service” and give him a discount or free admission! Never expected that! We’ll remember to pay it forward.]

And we’re off! The first hurdle for Randy was to ransom the car (and it was a pretty big ransom; it is, after all, a big city with few parking spaces) and then he had to manage to pack everything back in what passes for a “trunk.” [Aside: there are advantages to having very little trunk space: we can’t buy much (Translation: any!) stuff.]

With some difficulty with the traffic (thank goodness it is a Sunday!) we succeeded in finding the sign for the (current) start of Route 66. 

Hard to call it the highlight of the day—or even the hour—but we did get to see the Weinermobile! I’m so excited.

We are following the VERY detailed maps in the EZ66 Route 66 Guide for Travelers to, as much as possible, stay on Historic Route 66. One of the many fun things along the way are old Burma-Shave signs. So far we’ve seen four (but only remember two!): “He is shaved/So neat and trim/Red Riding Hood/Is chasing him/Burma-Shave!” and “She kissed the hairbrush/By mistake/She thought it was/Her husband Jake/Burma-Shave!” You wondered about the title, didn’t you!

The Blues Brothers in Joliet, IL.

For our daughter who has a dog named Elwood.

More Blues Brothers.

These next photos are just some of the wonderful stuff to be seen on Route 66.

Luckily, outside the two-room jail.

And inside.

Another dangerous criminal locked up!

We’re driving on roads that we ordinarily wouldn’t with the Corvette but they are a lot of fun. We been on a mile and a half original section of brick—yes, the original bricks—Route 66 and we’ve been on a section of original concrete that was walked on by turkeys when the concrete was wet. So cool! A lot more of Route 66 is drivable than I thought although a few sections have caused us a little heartburn (but no damage at all).

It's not yellow, but it is a brick road. Quite smooth, too.

An original section of Route 66.

Springfield, IL, was our first layover. [Aside: What’s the difference between a layover and a stopover? Luck.] We reserved a nice (we thought) room in an old, historic house, the Inn at 835. While the staff were friendly and helpful, they need to work on their host skills. For example, we ordered an cheese and crackers appetizer to be delivered to our room with a bottle of wine. They brought the wine and cheese but there is NO table in the room to put them on, there were no wine glasses, and no napkins or small plates. There were other minor things but it could have been SO much better with a little thought.

Spent some time in Springfield touring Lincoln’s home and seeking out Lou Pisani’s boyhood home, now a restored house in the four-block Lincoln Home historical area, the DuBois  (pronounced du-BOYS) house (not open to the public, it’s a maintenance headquarters).

The DuBois house. Lou Pisani's childhood home.

 

As we were entering the grounds of Lincoln’s home, there was a man sitting on a bench, bleeding rather heavily (that means there were small pools of blood on the ground beneath his foot, not large lakes of blood—its all relative!). People were just walking by so I had to offer to help. I ordered Randy around a bit and he got the Ranger to come and the Ranger had to call another “Lead” Ranger who proceeded to tell me I was better trained than he was! So much for thinking they are EMTs! Anyway, his foot got cleaned up and together we got the bleeding stopped and bandaged his foot (it was not a stitchable injury) and we all went our separate ways.

Lincoln’s home is beautifully restored and there is a lot of his original furniture. Most impressive to me was the kitchen! Of course, because of the time (1840s), there was no indoor plumbing at all. So, no indoor toilets and of course no water for the kitchen; can you imagine cooking dinner without running water? I can’t. The kitchen, which appeared to be about 10 x 12 feet, is the size of the cabin Abe grew up in with his parents and two siblings!

Mary Lincoln's kitchen.

We had lunch in Carlinsville, IL, the home of the highest concentration of contiguous Sears mail order houses in the nation, more than 150 in a 12 block neighborhood called the Standard Addition.

We think this is one of the Sears mail order homes. They stopped selling in 1940.

Lunch stop.

Second night was in St. Louis (back to Marriott hotels) after abandoning Route 66 because of one of the heaviest rainstorms I’ve had the misfortune to drive through. Not quite the quantity we occasionally get in AZ, but AZ storms are generally short; this was heavy, heavy, heavy rain for about an hour. Difficult to even see the lane markers. So we decided to just get on the Interstate and go to a hotel.

 

Being a tourist is hard work!...

Finally made it to Chicago! Today we went to the top of the Sears—uh, Willis—Tower to step into a glass bay window 103 stories above Adams Street to look down at the start of the Route 66 road we’re going to travel in a few days. Let me tell you, stepping out onto a glass ledge—nevermind it is stressed to five tons and enclosed in thick glass—was, for me, TERRIFYING! Doesn’t sound like long, but it took me about 15 seconds of our 60 second allotment in the glass bay just to make that first step! But I wanted to do it because that side of the Willis Tower looks directly down at the beginning (pretty close to the beginning, anyway) of Route 66. 

103 stories above Adams Street, the start of Route 66.

Took all my will power to stand there!

 

If you look very, very carefully, you can see the projecting glass bays almost at the top of the Sears Tower.

Because we now have Masters degrees in Chicago Bus Schedules, after that expedition we took a bus to the start of an Architectural Cruise. We chose our cruise wisely because, of the cruises we saw, ours was the only one that had any portion of the top deck under a canopy. When it is in the 90s with 90% humidity, you NEED that cover. We had a great tour guide who filled our head with esoteric fact after esoteric fact, very little of which I remember, other than that the Chicago has the tallest building in the world that was designed by a woman (Jeanne Gang, the St. Regis, at 1168 ft., the third tallest in Chicago).

Some random views of Chicago from our tour.

This is a multi-million $ projector for the nightly projected art show. It is so sophisticated that it can project the light show only on the facade of the Merchandise Mart, not into the windows of the building!

 After we collapsed back at the hotel (did I tell you it was 93 degrees and 90% humidity?), we got ready for our dinner at the Signature Room at the 95^th in the Hancock Building (5^th tallest in Chicago) with Jessie and Gary—who drove one and a half hours each way just to have dinner with us! Fabulous dinner and a fabulous view. They headed home and we headed to the bar on the 96^th floor for an after dinner drink.

The Signature Room is at the top of the Hancock Building.

Randy and me with our friends Gary and Jessie at dinner.

 That would have been a nice end to a fabulous evening if I hadn’t checked my texts and found that our oldest friend had succumbed to the cancer she was diagnosed with only a month before. It has thus been a difficult evening and day.

Life does go on, and Marty would not have wanted us to mourn, she loved to travel and she would have wanted us to continue our exploring of Chicago and to continue our upcoming drive along Route 66. So we walked around Chicago on Michigan Ave. window shopping at Tiffany’s and Cartier and Nordstom’s and Bloomies (Bloomingdale’s Department Store for the Aussies reading this). Randy is grateful we only window-shopped.

Tomorrow we ransom the car and make our way to the absolute beginning of Route 66. Well, the current absolute beginning of Route 66. It has, at various times, been near Lake Shore Drive and Jackson Street. It is now just off Michigan Avenue, on Adams. Jackson was the first but then the powers that be in Chicago decided to make Jackson one-way the wrong way. And we’re going to TRY to have breakfast at Lou Mitchell’s (not to be confused with Lou Malnatti’s where you can get some of Chicago’s best deep dish [is there any other kind in Chicago?] pizza).

Then onward to Springfield, IL, home of Abraham Lincoln and Lou Pisani.