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...

On Saturday, despite all-day rain, several hundred people came out to celebrate the grand reopening of The Mill as a Route 66 museum. Local officials, Illinois state representatives, Route 66 Association of Illinois officers, staff and board members of Illinois Route 66 Scenic Byway, officers and members of the Mill's restoration and preservation group, media, Route 66 enthusiasts, and Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner packed the building for the ribbon-cutting and brief speeches. An exterior shot of The Mill shows off its restoration and its four-sail windmill on a rainy Illinois day. The festivities began with a parade of about a dozen vehicles beginning at Kickapoo and Pekin Streets in downtown Lincoln and following an old alignment of Route 66 to the Mill. Illinois Route 66 Scenic Byway project manager, former Logan County Tourism Director, and Mill supporter Geoff Ladd led the parade in his vehicle. I drove up to Lincoln from Edwardsville, stopped briefly at the Mill, and...

You may recall that my new (to me) van, Alice, had a previous incarnation as a State Farm mobile office. She came home with me from DeSoto, Missouri, still equipped with a very large ladder rack on the roof and a heavy desk and attached office chair wedged crosswise in the cargo area. So that I could get to work cleaning, measuring, and planning the interior, (and also so that my neighbors could quit wondering about my new hobby of buying white vans with ladder racks), I was anxious to get the equipment off and out of the van. Alice looks spiffier after the rack removal and a trip to the car wash. Steve Rensberry and his son Ben to the rescue! Last week they arrived one evening armed with a step ladder and tool boxes. After ascertaining that the ladder rack was bolted to the rack rails and so could be removed leaving the rails intact (and not needing to plug holes in the roof), father and son went to work. Steve removed the bolts and together on ladders they were able to sli...

On Tuesday, April 18, U.S. Congressman Rodney Davis (13th District, Illinois) kicked off a two-day tour  of Illinois Route 66 to highlight its significance and importance, and to draw attention to two new pieces of legislation. Illinois Representative Avery Bourne and Illinois Route 66 Scenic Byway  staff, Executive Director Bill Kelly and Assistant Director Geoff Ladd, accompanied Davis on Tuesday's portion of the tour.  The Wildey Theatre marquee announced the Route 66 tour. Tuesday's stops included Livingston, Litchfield, Carlinville, and Girard after a tour kick-off under the marquee of the historic Wildey Theatre  in Edwardsville. In Edwardsville, City Administrator Tim Harr, Alton Regional CVB Executive Director Brett Stawar and staff, Wildey Theatre Manager Al Canal and staff, media, and yours truly attended the event. Representative Davis took to the lectern at 10:00 a.m. and was presented with an Illinois Route 66 Scenic Byway cap by Bill Kelly. Da...

Introducing Alice, my adventure van and soon-to-be mini-glam-van-camper! Alice the Van, at the restored Texaco station in DeSoto MO. You know that feeling when you went shopping and came home with the wrong thing? You know, pants that don't fit, shoes that hurt your feet, dress that just looks all wrong? Well, I did that in February with the first van that I bought. A van to convert to a mini-RV was the right idea, but that specific van was not. I had been researching the little Ford Transit Connects for months. I loved the first-generation style of the 2010 through 2013 models, but the majority of them are high mileage. So I talked myself into a 2015 second-generation Transit Connect. Less headroom and not so cute; long wheelbase and low mileage. But that van had one more thing--that "new car" (translation:  chemicals) smell. Most of you know I'm asthmatic, and chemical and fragrance smells and I do not play well together.  I tried boxes of baking soda, a...

Five things that are happening with my Women of Route 66 project: Thing #1: On March 7, I gave my new program, "Dreams, Designs, and Dastardly Deeds:  the Women of Missouri Route 66," at the Missouri History Museum in St. Louis. Wish you could have all been there! Some of the stories I shared were:  Julia Chaney, cook/owner/operator at Red's Giant Hamburg; Mayme Ousley, four-term mayor of St. James; outlaws Bonnie Parker and Blanche Barrow; and the women of the Boots, Wagon Wheel, and Munger Moss motels. I hope to have a couple more bookings of this program to announce soon. Thing #2: Watch for an article on some of the Missouri 66 women in the summer issue of Show Me Route 66 , the excellent quarterly publication of the  Route 66 Association of Missouri . Thing #3: My column in the next issue of the Buzz will be about the Mansholt family--particularly the women--and their hotels in Litchfield, Illinois. The Mansholts, now well into their second generat...

As I've been working on my forthcoming book, tentatively titled Women of 66 and Their Contributions to the Culture of the Mother Roa d, two program opportunities have arisen. These two programs will be the first based on the new book (unless another opportunity arises before the second scheduled one). The first is coming up on Tuesday, March 7, at 7:00 pm, at the Missouri History Museum at Lindell and DeBaliviere in Forest Park, St. Louis. The title of the program is "Dreams, Designs, and Dastardly Deeds:  The Women of Missouri Route 66." I'll share remarkable tales of some of the women along Missouri's 300 miles of Route 66. The program is free, and we'll be located in the Lee Auditorium.  The second program is scheduled for Monday, October 2, at 7:00 pm, at the Macoupin County Historical Society's library at 920 W. Breckenridge St. in Carlinville, Illinois. The title of the program is "Adventurers, Crusaders, and Entrepreneurs:  The Women of ...