Route 66: Chicago to Bloomington

After being delayed due to COVID by three years we finally got to drive the famous Mother Road in June 2023 with Paul & Robyn from Down under on Route 66 who maintained an entertaining blog as we drove.

The first stop was after leaving Chicago was Willowbrook at Del Rhea’s chicken basket diner, a famous diner of the old road. We got there a bit too early to have lunch but it was opened so we could at least have a look around at the décor.

Next (very brief) stop was White Fence Farm in Romeoville, where they grow and cook chicken (that they sell through some satellite stores as well) every day for dinner. As we went in the morning we couldn’t visit it, only had a look around the outside.

We saw lots of big things on our trip – including big trailers.

The first proper stop was in Joliet, where we walked past linden tress in bloom to the museum where they had interesting stories and pictures of the stone quarries they used to have here, as well as about the local industry making horseshoes & barbed wire. Outside the museum there was a group of motor bikes also doing the Route 66, with the support truck behind them as well. Before leaving we pulled into a carpark to admire the old bridge.

Next stop was the Polk-a dot diner, where we were advised to get a frozen yogurt – good tip! They had some interesting statues of Elvis, Marilyn and Betty Boo, and the toilets had interesting décor – Elvis for girls, Marilyn for boys.

There are some Giant statues along the route and we stopped in Wilmington to see the Gemini Giant but the lady who owns the café next to it was not keen to have us as guests as she was “doing Lord’s work”.

We managed to escape the Two Cell Jail in Gardiner.

We continued driving along till we reached Dwight. Here we met Phil & Debbie Becker, who owned a gas station for a very long time and a few years ago donated it to the community. We went for a drive around the town to see the local bank which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and a building that housed the very first drug & alcohol rehab facility in US (with its own windmill for power and water) . Then Phil showed us his immaculate hot rods that he’d been working on. Three of his cars made it on the cover of Good Guys and at some point he owned the California Star – a Ford Model T-Inspired Custom Roadster from the 1980s that he sold to a museum and is now on display.

In some parts of Route 66 it is still visible that it used to be a double carriageway.

Another interesting stop was Pontiac, where we visited the Route 66 Association Hall of Fame museum – not big but very interesting. They have a whole floor dedicated to military stuff and walking in was quite intimidating as they had all these mannequins dressed in military costumes. Downstairs they had many drawings as well as the Combi van of Bob Waldmire, a bit of a local hero and excellent illustrator and historian of Route 66, whose drawings we kept seeing along the route.

There is a Pontiac museum as well.

The town has lots of quite well done murals too.

Before reaching our accommodation we drove past the famous Dead Man’s Corner in Towanda and then stopped in Lexington to walk half an hour down “Memory Lane” listing all the states that Route 66 goes through.

After driving past a few more corn fields we reached Bloomington, which is actually called Bloomington-Normal as there are two smaller towns that merged into one.

There is a short video here.