Obtenir vos sur la vive émotion Route Nationale Soixante-Six

[emptysea]

To my mind, Historic Route 66 begins in earnest in Joliet. Through Chicago, it looks pretty much like any other city street and for a long section before Joliet, the original road was over-seeded with concrete and steel and Interstate 55 took root.

The Joliet Area Historical Museum is here and has a ton of information on Route 66, but we were in the mood for riding not reading and besides, it was looking more and more like rain. We made a stop at another landmark, The Rialto Square Theatre.

As you can probably tell, a ride on Route 66 is a ride from landmark to landmark. The Rialto Square Theater is one such landmark and worth a stop just for the facade, but it's truly more beautiful inside. Originally built as a vaudeville and movie theater, it has new life as mainly a live music venue, but it still shows classic or specialty films as well.

Rialto Square Theater (note the "Superman" poses on these two!)
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The remainder of our ride south would be on Illinois Highway 53 which was actually Route 66 prior to the decertification. Many of the landmarks we would see from here on out were here when my parents or even my grandparents left the city for a summer vacation.

The route would have been only two lanes here, probably with the shoulders marked by a long line those black and white wooden stubs, standing like sentinels every few yards that some of us can still picture in our minds.
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I don't know anything about this little ice cream stand. Perhaps it's new. Perhaps it's been there forever. Either way, it's a great example of what kinds of businesses opened up along the route. Food stops, trinket stores, auto camps (later becoming motels), and tourist attractions dotted the road from Chicago to Santa Monica.
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My parents and grandparents may have rolled by Stateville Prison while infamous murders Leopold and Loeb where incarcerated there. Maybe not Loeb, since he was murdered here in 1936, but Leopold remained imprisoned until 1958. Their story of premeditated murder is legendary in Chicago and their names will come up again a bit later in this report.

The stonework sign is almost inviting, like an entrance to a resort, but this is no spa.
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My folks may have even stopped at The Launching Pad Restaurant in the 50's or 60's for a quick lunch and a Instamatic snapshot in front of the Gemini Giant, one of at least four similar "Muffler Man" figures that still remain on Route 66.

For some reason, I can't find the picture I took of us at the Gemini Giant. It could have been lost when the camera got waterlogged or it was taken with Paul's camera. Tony and I visited a couple of years ago, so I substituted this picture.
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Just before we got to Wilmington and the Giant, it began to rain. Hard. I pulled over at a BP station, gassed up, laughed at Paul who had removed his rain pants at the Rialto and was now soaked through, and waited a few minutes of it to blow over. And it did so quickly

Rain break...
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It was getting to be lunchtime and as luck (and planning) would have it, we were just a few minutes from another landmark, The Polk-A-Dot Drive-in in Braidwood, IL. My road camera was tucked away due to the rain, but I pointed out the nuclear power plant we passed to Paul.
As we approached the drive-in, it began to rain again. We were fortunate enough to get our bikes and ourselves under the canopy before it started pouring again.

Polk-A-Dot Drive-In. The woman passenger of the coral Chevy in the background was celebrating her 76th birthday at the drive-in. Her husband was very proud of the car and even more proud of his wife. Pretty adorable.
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I had a breaded pork tenderloin sandwich. I explained the menu as best I could to Paul and he had a double cheeseburger. The three of us shared a huge order of cheese-fries. Tony and I did our best to apologize to our french friend for calling this topping "cheese", but Paul didn't need an apology; it was clear that he enjoyed the concoction regardless of the ingredients.

Early start tomorrow, so end of Part II