So here's what happened along Route 66

Cutter's Log - Stardate 8002.21.60
Current Song - Then Came You (Dionne Warwick and the Spinners)

It's a habit of mine failing to tell what happened on big trips I make on here.

Anyway, my grandparents and I began our Route 66 trip in Lincoln. We had lunch there. I can't recall the name of the resturaunt, but their specialty was the Horseshoe. I had no idea what a Horseshoe was, but after looking on the menu it looked similar to something I ate at Ross's 24-hour resturaunt in Bettendorf:

Cheddar cheese
Fries
Bacon bits
Texas toast

stacked on itself in that order. The resturaunt was nice and had a bunch of old movie posters, vinyl records and even a western movie that played on a small TV. My grandparents took a few pictures of the Lincoln town square for a friend of theirs. There was also The Palms tavern located on the 66 route, as mention in our tour book, but that had since closed.

Elkville and Broadwell were minor stops. Broadwell was there the old Pig Hip resturaunt was located, until it caught on fire last year.

Williamsville is a nice town. I covered a couple of their softball games down at state in 2005, when they took 2nd. The first attraction was a repair shop with a lot of old 66 items. The owner says a lot of people do not stop and visit it because they think it's just a repair business. But what is inside makes it probably my favorite stop on the Route 66 tour. A lot of old machinery and gizmos used to do repair work. Plus there's a gift shop of really old stuff, you may think. That "really old stuff" are things that I like.

They had an unopened stubby bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon dating back to c. 1950s. I bought it for $2. I'm not going to drink it, of course, but I can say that I bought beer from a dry town (Williamsville is really a dry town). The town also has a museum of town history located in a couple of box cars.

Springfield didn't have a whole lot of stops, except for the old Shea's station and the Cozy Dog Drive-In. I had a corn dog from the first place to sell corn dogs on sticks. From there, the route splits in two. There's the 1930-1977 route, and the 1926-1930 route. We went on the recent route which took us through Waggoner.

We went through some other towns before hitting Litchfield. Litchfield is home to the Aviston Cafe and the world's largest baseball/softball indoor practice complex. It's also home to a furniture store called Small Furniture. Most of the Cutter family is small, as is my grandparents. So they wanted a picture in front of the store as sort of a pun.

We went through some more small towns, including Staunton, where there are a couple of old semis from Campbell's 66 (a turcking company or something). Then we went into Edwardsville, where they have a real nice downtown. From there, we went to Pontoon Beach and Madison where we met the Chain of Rocks Bridge.

The bridge, which goes across the Mississippi River, has been closed to traffic since 1968. The three of us walked on it, and grandpa and I walked the entire distance. That's something I like: being on the middle of a bridge overlooking a wall of water, with wind blowing toward or against me. You can see the tallest buildings of St. Louis from the bridge, as well as the Arch.

We stayed the night at a hotel in Edwardsville.

The next day I wanted to make a side trip to a town called Valmeyer (not on 66). The town is south of the Metro East, and west of Waterloo. I heard about it many years ago as a town that was destroyed by the 1993 flood which rebuilt on higher land. I wanted to see the old town and survey what was damaged. Almost everything had been destroyed, with only a few buildings left. It looked like an unbuilt plot of a town. The downtown was situated along Main Street south of the railroad. There's nothing on the other side of town except ball diamonds, the old fire station and an overgrown tennis court. You could see front steps of downtown buildings overgrown next to the main street's sidewalk. There are overgrown streets that look like small alleys, with stop signs still in place.

We went back home on the old Route 66 route from Staunton. From there to Springfield, remnants of Route 66 took the form of old stretches of pavement. That's pretty much it. Carlinville, along the route, has a very, very neat downtown. Sort of reminded me of the narrow streets in Europe. They have a town square also, and a wonderful county building.

We had dinner at a place called Charlie Parker's in Springfield. It had been featured in Diners, Drives and Dine-Ins on the Food Network. We were told of this place by the man at the Williamsville garage. The place was a throwback to the old diners of the 1950s, with vinyl records and barstools.

Before I get to the menu, I usually eat everything on my plate no matter how big it is. With that being said, I cound not finish the bacon cheeseburger burrito. The thing was 3 inches tall and 10 inches wide with nothing but cheddar cheese, ground beef and bacon bits. Looks like a heart attack, right?

Throughout our trip, we had tried to find the cheapest gas prices. Peoria was at $3.91 when we went down, and $3.99 when we came back. Most Metro East locations were at $4.09. We gassed up in Gillespie at $3.92, and then in Pekin at $3.91. The station in Pekin was an old one, and still had rotating odometer-like numbers on the gas pumps. Having worked at a gas station, that kind of interested me.

I wanted to go on another short side trip in East Peoria. But I thought grandpa and grandma wouldn't like to go up Lake Shore Drive. That's the road that goes across I-74 and is REALLY high up. I went up it once and saw the Peoria skyline while I was at the 2005 state softball finals. Maybe next time.

I took pictures of the trip, and should have them on my MySpace soon.