The Little Brown Signs are my Heroes

Last night Danielle and I made it to a little town in Illinois called Lincoln.  Yesterday was harder than any one single day that has come before it.  Let me just say that navigation is MUCH harder than expected!  Don't get me wrong, the road is very well marked.  The problem was finding the right roads to turn on in order to follow the signs.  It got even harder after dark.  It became somewhat comical to me just how happy seeing one of those little brown signs made me!  The signs are only about 1 foot square and brown with white markings indicating the state and what direction to go next. It was like a treasure hunt trying to find the next one.  If I didn't see anything after more than a couple miles my heart would sink and I would begin to think we had made a wrong turn somewhere.  I'm getting stressed all over again just thinking about it!





But never fear, we had some good fun along the way.  Just after leaving Chicago Danielle and I stopped at Henry's giant hot dog stand.  It proclaims itself as "a meal in itself" however, it wasn't quite so filling so I got a milkshake to go along with it.  Back on the road again we had high hopes of seeing a lot more sights but quickly learned that the ones right along the road without too many detours are the ones we have to focus on.  They're the most fun, anyway! The first one was the Launching Pad Drive-In (not a theater as we had expected but a historical restaurant; closed at this time).  There we saw our first Route 66 Giant.  It's called the Gemini Giant and a picture is below.

 

Next, we passed the Polka Dot Drive-In.  We took some pictures there and moved on.  In Dwight we came to a historical gas station! I found a button to push with a speaker box above it and was literally blown back a step or two by the sheer volume of the voice that greeted Danielle and I (the only two at the station; also closed)! We learned about the history of the station and the town and then resumed our journey.  Along the way we also saw a neon sign announcing that we had entered Lexington and Burma-Shave signs which were a series of one or two word signs spaced apart every few feet along the road to spell out a sentence in advertisement of a product.  It was very distracting while driving but the signs were cute and they made us laugh.

Probably the scariest/strangest/funniest part of the drive was while driving through Bloomington.  We were following the directions in our guide book and all of a sudden we came to a light where the book said to go straight but the road only went left or right! I drove straight anyway, into a parking lot.  We pulled over, perplexed by the situation.  After a little while I decided to drive through the parking lot and continue following the road on the other side.  It looked right..... right? And it WAS!!!! We were amazed that we had just driven through an unmarked parking lot in order to find our way back onto Route 66.  Strange how that one worked out....

When we got to the hotel Danielle and I were so tired that we weren't thinking straight.  We got to our room at the Hampton Inn and collapsed.  And now, after a good night sleep, some time in the hot tub, and a magnificent breakfast, we are on our way again.  Hopefully to St. Louis but I'm learning that plans made aren't always plans kept.