Day Two: Springfield, IL to St. Louis, MO

This morning, we decided to sleep in and let the boys swim in the Route 66 themed pool at the Route 66 Hotel and Conference Center in Springfield, IL. This hotel is being refurbished by new owners and has a lot of potential to be a really fun place to stay along 66. So...after a good night's sleep and a late morning swim, we finally hit the road toward St. Louis. This stretch of 66 offers several alignments of Old 66...we chose the "extra old" route...which was used between 1926-1930. This jaunt involved driving Illinois State Route 4 and shooting off on several "spur roads" that were part of the original alignment of Route 66. One section even included a mile long stretch of brick highway that was added to the Route in the 1930s. Like yesterday's stretch, this part of the highway sent us through many small towns like Chatham, Auburn, Virden, Nilwood, Carlinville, Gillespie and Staunton. We didn't see many other travelers on this section of the highway as it's the least seldom traveled route since it's the earliest alignment of the Mother Road. We enjoyed the day, though, and got to see some iconic points: The famous "turkey tracks" where it looks like a turkey danced in the wet concrete when the highway was first poured. We saw the Chain of Rocks bridge, which was an engineering marvel for it's time, crossing the Mississippi River from Illinois to Missouri. The bridge has a "dog-leg" in it to avoid intake towers in the river. It was decommissioned in 1970 and is only accessible by pedestrians and cyclists. The sad thing is much of the St. Louis side of Route 66 runs through some sketchy neighborhoods...we even got a little nervous driving into the creepy old Chain of Rocks parking lot, which is now blocked off and hand painted signs on the jersey barriers read, "Do Not Leave Posessions in Cars." We barely even left the car ourselves, snapped a few photos and got the Dodge outta Dodge. We drove the old Route through part of the city, only again to follow the advice of one of our books and veer off to the interstate to steer clear of unsafe neighborhoods. Hopefully St. Louis will experience some revitalization in the future, since it seems it could be a pretty cool city.

We chose not to spend much time in St. Louis, since we were here four years ago and took the tour of the Gateway Arch and the elevator to the top. We did, however, stop at the epic Ted Drewes along Chippewa Street for some frozen custard. YUM! We had a lot of lookers at the Dart and some good conversations with people before heading to our hotel in Kirkwood. Tomorrow, our goal is to put some miles under our seats and get a little further down the highway! Because...adventure awaits!