Stacy and I have always been big into road trips throughout our relationship. When we started discussing where we were going to go on our honeymoon, we decided to take the ultimate road trip…Route 66. Since we live outside of Chicago, we were able to drive it the whole way to Santa Monica. Many people think that Route 66 starts in Chicago, Illinois and ends in Los Angeles, California, but this is only partially true. While Chicago has always been the official start of Route 66, Los Angeles was the end only until 1935 when it was moved further west to Santa Monica, California.
We wanted James to experience some of what the most famous road in the United States—maybe the world—had to offer so we took a mini-Route 66 trip down to St. Louis. Here’s a cool video that showcases part of the route we traveled on our way to St. Louis:
A couple of days before we left, Stacy took James to the pediatrician to get checked out. Her mommy instincts told her that James was starting to get sick. The doc looked him over and sent him down for some bloodwork. Some of the levels were slightly elevated so he wrote a prescription for an antibiotic to cover any illness that may be starting. Stacy also updated the medical binder and packed it just in case James needed any medical treatment while we were on our trip. Fortunately, he didn’t.
Between Stacy and I, we took around 250 pictures on this short 4-day road trip. I obviously couldn’t post all of those pictures here. It was tough, but I managed to cut it down to 57 pictures to share here. As Stacy and I learned from our honeymoon Route 66 trip from Chicago to Santa Monica, you need to either give yourself enough time to see all the sites along the route or pick and choose which sites you want to see and which ones you can skip. There are so many places to stop along the way; so much history.
Let’s hit the road. James is all buckled in and ready to go.
Joliet, Illinois
While we were in Joliet, we stopped by the United Cerebral Palsy office to check out their accessible playground.
Wilmington, Illinois
From there we made a quick stop at the Launching Pad Drive-In in Wilmington, Illinois. Unfortunately, like so many places along Route 66, it didn’t make it and had to close.
Braidwood, Illinois
Further down the road we met some friends for lunch at the Polk-a-Dot Drive-In in Braidwood, Illinois.
Gardner, Illinois
After lunch, we continued our journey down the old Route and made a stop in Gardner. Stacy and I remember passing by the Riviera Roadhouse on our honeymoon roadtrip in 2005. We were saddened to hear that it burned down five years later.
Dwight, Illinois
Lexington, Illinios
Towanda, Illinois
Funks Grove, Illinois
Atlanta, Illinois
Springfield, Illinois
We checked into a hotel for the night. The following morning, we had breakfast at Cracker Barrel and went to the Illinois State Museum before continuing on our journey to St. Louis.
Virden, Illinois
Girard, Illinois
Staunton, Illinois
Edwardsville, Illinois
Collinsville, Illinois
Saint Louis, Missouri
We met some friends at the Saint Louis Science Center, enjoyed a nice lunch at Fitz’s Bottling Company restaurant, and had some frozen custard at Ted Drewes.
Like I said towards the beginning of this post, if you plan on travelling down Route 66, you either need to give yourself enough time to see everything along the way or pick and choose which attractions you want to see. There is so much out there. We took two days to get to St. Louis from Chicago, and we didn’t stop and see everything along the way. We could have probably spent another day or two making more stops along the way. We only gave ourselves two days to make it to St. Louis so we made a list of the sites we wanted to stop at, and the ones we could skip. Would I have liked to stop at them all? Hell yes!
I think James enjoyed himself. Some day we hope we can do the full trip with him, all the way to California. Stacy and I did the full trip in a week on our honeymoon, but we’d probably plan for two weeks if we were to do it again.
If you are interested in taking a trip down Route 66, there are plenty of books and websites available that you can use to help plan your trip. I can’t recommend anything, because I’m sure the books we bought before our honeymoon almost ten years ago are a bit outdated. A lot has changed since then. Some places are no longer there, and there may be some new attractions that have popped up in recent years.
