The Route 66 Chick

Hoping that many of you can join us on Saturday, June 10, from Virden to Collinsville for the third annual Blue Carpet Corridor festival celebration! Here's our press release: Blue Carpet Corridor will hold third annual Route 66 event on Saturday, June 10 The Illinois Route 66 Blue Carpet Corridor will be celebrating its third annual festival event on Saturday, June 10. From Virden down to Collinsville on several historic alignments of Route 66, twelve communities will be offering car shows, festivals, museum and attraction open hours, children's activities, food, photo ops, and fun. Souvenir Blue Carpet Corridor 2017 passports will be available for free in all the participating communities, and visitors can get a unique stamp in each town. The complete list of passport stops is available at www.bluecarpetcorridor.org . Passport Stop open hours will be from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, and many events and attractions will also follow that schedule. Also available on t...

Sunday, the last day of the 2013 International Mother Road Route 66 Festival in Springfield, turned out to be a relaxing day. By the last day of a festival, you've usually already caught up with friends, made most of your book sales, and eaten way too much festival food. We started the day with a great breakfast at Jungle Jim's Cafe on Peoria Road. This classic diner is decorated with speedway memorabilia. Four of us enjoyed good food, service, and conversation. Jungle Jim's Cafe on Peoria Road. (Joe Sonderman photo.) From there it was back downtown to finish off the festival. The crowd was much smaller on Sunday and the event was in serious danger of imploding by the middle of the afternoon. The Illinois Travel Expo officially closed at 2:00 pm and we were soon packed and on our way. On the way home, another visit to Weezy's Route 66 Bar and Grill in Hamel was in order for a late lunch. Or was that early supper? Original Tourist Haven sign inside Weezy...

This was the third year fellow author Joe Sonderman and I attended the International Mother Road Route 66 Festival in Springfield, Illinois, as "itinerant Route 66 book mongers," to quote a Route 66 friend's clever comment.  Kudos to Bill Kelly and Stacy Conn of the Illinois Route 66 Scenic Byway organization for terrific planning and execution of the Illinois Travel Expo. And many thanks to them for taking Joe and me under their wing as we work on our new book, "Route 66 in Illinois," and in so doing help to promote Route 66 in the great state of Illinois - where the road began. The layout this year for the Illinois Travel Expo was great and we contributed some 'eye candy' to the intersection of Washington and Fifth Streets as Joe parked his '57 Chevy Bel Air next to our booth. The car would prove to be a magnet for a number of diverse photo vignettes during the weekend.  Our booth at the International Mother Road Route 66 Festival. (Joe Son...

Friday morning found my fellow author Joe Sonderman and I headed for Springfield, Illinois, for the International Mother Road Route 66 Festival. We planned to take our time driving up the older alignment, shunning the interstate for the day. To my delight, Joe decided to drive his '57 Chevy Bel Air and had spent a couple evenings polishing, putting on new tires, and all the other things one might do to a classic car before taking it out on the road.  With our book stock and show equipment stowed in the trunk, we took off. First stop - Weezy's (the former Tourist Haven roadhouse, established in the 1930s) in Hamel. There, members of a car club were just getting ready to leave. We parked alongside some of the other classic cars and here's the lineup. (Joe's is the tropical turquoise.) Lunch was great  with good food and good service. Owners Karen Wiesemeyer and Coleman Weissman do a great job. From Hamel we headed north on Route 66 and from the Worden Wye we took t...