*NOTE: Five years ago I began a journey across the country with Thiel, a dear friend of mine. I was moving from Chicago to Long Beach, California, and she agreed to make the drive with me. I present my journal of that journey on the corresponding day that it was recorded five years ago. Enjoy reliving this adventure with me!
Day 2: January 4, 2014
We started our day by having breakfast at the Log Cabin Inn in Pontiac, IL. It has been in business since 1926. When the road was repositioned, it now ran behind the restaurant, so the owners had it jacked up, turned around, and put back down so that it would face the new alignment of the roadway. Thiel and I marveled at the inexpensive prices of the menu compared to Chicago, and the food was delicious.
After breakfast we went downtown to the Route 66 museum. It was impressive, and quite large. The older men that were volunteers there were very friendly to us. One of them told us of his latest trip down the road to California in the spring of last year, then pulled out his external hard drive and started showing us pictures from the trip. He remarked at one point that he had several hundred pictures from it and I worried that we wouldn’t be able to escape until we’d been shown every single one. They were mostly interesting, though, and we did manage to extract ourselves before he’d clicked through them all.
Me in a jail cell in the Route 66 Museum in Pontiac, IL.
An old Cootie in the Route 66 Museum in Pontiac, IL.
Next we drove to a park across the Vermilion River from the courthouse square because there is a swinging pedestrian bridge there. The river was frozen over (there were tracks through the snow on top of the ice as if someone had driven something down the middle of the river). The man at the museum told us that we should be careful on the swinging bridges (there are three in Pontiac) because they can move a lot. Of course this meant we had to try it. We walked across it and back, and it did undulate quite a bit, but it wasn’t bucking so much that it was threatening to pitch us over. The creaking made me a little edgy, but we lived to tell about it.
The Pontiac, IL courthouse.
Pontiac, IL.
Swinging bridge in Pontiac, IL.
Thiel on a Pontiac, IL swinging bridge.
We left Pontiac behind and continued down the road. It’s mostly straight at this point, following alongside I-55 and a railroad. There are so many railroad tracks in Illinois! We passed through Towanda, Illinois and I spotted a very interesting-looking farmhouse in the middle of a field to our left, across the railroad tracks.
I decided that we had to go closer to that house, so at the next road to the left I turned. There was another road soon after that on our left, so I took that, then had to take the next road on the left to get to the driveway to the house. It was literally in the middle of a huge cornfield. It was a three-story brick house with a full basement, old and creepy but very impressive. We climbed out of the car and walked up to the back door. The steps to the back porch were rickety and there were no windows. There were three doors, all of which were padlocked, and I could hear a smoke detector beeping at intervals, as they do when the battery is getting low.
The basement door to the right of the back porch had been broken off its hinges. There were fresh-looking footprints in the snow around the house, and some snow had blown into the basement. There were fresh footprints in that snow as well. Had those not been there, honestly, I would have probably gone inside and wandered through that whole wonderful house, but it made me wonder if someone was still in there. Being a horror movie fan I always go there in my mind. In fact, as we drove up to the house on the dirt driveway I said to Thiel, “This is how horror movies start.” She agreed.
Thiel at the creepy, fabulous old farmhouse near Towanda, IL.
I walked all the way around the house, looking in all the basement windows, most of which I couldn’t see through, and all of the other windows I could reach to see through. The most impressive feature inside the house was the front staircase. I really wanted to go in there and go up it, but those footprints in the basement once again kept me from doing it. As I peered in the window to the left of the front door I heard a loud bang come from somewhere inside the house. It sounded as if it came from upstairs. It was like a door slamming or something being dropped on the floor, loudly. It rattled me, and then I figured maybe it was a shutter on the upper windows. The wind was blowing very hard so I attributed it to that. I continued to make my way around the house and look in all the windows I could get to, and I heard another loud bang. I looked up and there were no shutters on any of the windows, and it really did seem to be coming from inside the house. I decided that we should probably leave as soon as we could, but we wanted to look in the barn first.
I told Thiel about the banging and it nagged at me the whole time we were there from then on. I made sure the car was locked as we walked away from it and went over to the barn. I had to pee really badly so I told Thiel I thought I’d pee in there. She said she needed to go, too. The wind was strong and it was really cold. The barn was pretty open so it didn’t provide much shelter from the elements. Thiel picked a spot and voided her bladder while I decided I could wait until we found a restroom somewhere. I told her this and, as she emerged from her uncivilized pee, she laughingly said, “I can’t believe you made me do this!” It’s different for guys. The wind was blowing, so my concern was that it could have changed course and blown pee all over me, plus it was cold and, you know, shrinkage.
Onward we went through long stretches of highway with almost no other cars. In Bloomington I missed a turn and we ended up getting dumped onto I-55. I got off as soon as possible and found the old road. As I am that much a purist, I insisted that we drive back to the turn I missed so that we can say we did, indeed, drive the entire way as much as possible on Route 66. Thiel humored me—well, I mean, what else can she do? I’m the driver this whole way. We drove the stretch back to where we should have turned, then got gas, turned around and drove back down the same stretch. We were getting hungry so we stopped at Dixie Truckers Home in McLean. They had a buffet so we pigged out. It’s been in business since 1928 and has only closed for one day since then, when it burned to the ground. The gas pumps were still operational so they opened the next day to sell gas. The restaurant was rebuilt and they’re still going strong.
It got dark while we ate so we started thinking of where we should stop for the night. The next place there was anything we wanted to see was Springfield so we decided to stop there. We passed through Lincoln, where we stopped to get pictures of the World’s Largest Covered Wagon.
Route 66 can get confusing at times (there are newer versions of it coexisting with the original road), and signage can be spotty, so we had to backtrack a few times to make sure we were still on it.
We started hearing of a new snowstorm moving in so we’re concerned about that. I’m ready to reach the point where that’s no longer a threat. We got to Springfield and saw the capitol, then started searching for motels. The first three we went to didn’t work for us, but we settled on Lincoln’s Lodge. It’s newly updated and quite nice for the price. We took our things in the room. It was Saturday night so we decided we should go out on the town for a bit.
We headed downtown to a gay bar. We ordered drinks and had been there for no longer than 15 minutes when a fight broke out. Not impressed. We left and went down the street to the next gay bar. One of the drunkest people at the first bar was staggering down the street as we left, and as we got to the next bar he entered there and inflicted himself on some people. We had a drink there, then went to a straight bar so Thiel could potentially have some eye candy. Not much to see in ol’ Springfield, alas.
We headed back to the motel via Godfather’s Pizza, where we got some carryout. Back at the room we hung out and ate pizza, then went to bed. I woke up in the middle of the night sweating because our heater was that good. Thiel wasn’t in bed and the bathroom light was on so I assumed she was in there. The bathroom door was open. Then I realized I could hear regular breathing sounds coming from in there, so I giggled, thinking she’d fallen asleep on the toilet. I walked over to investigate and found her asleep in the bathtub with her pillow.
“What are you doing?” I said. She woke up and told me that she’d been roasting. She couldn’t figure out how to turn on the light, then couldn’t find the controls for the heater (the panel was closed), so she figured the best way to cool off was to lie in the bathtub. Laughing, I opened the front door and fanned the wintry air inside to cool us down quickly, then we went back to sleep.
The latest snowstorm has begun and it’s not looking fun out there. It’ll be slow going on this portion of our journey, I fear. Ideally we’ll at least get to St. Louis before stopping again. Soon we’ll be out of the range of such weather. I hope.
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