This month’s Daytrippin’ is a trip down Route 66. We were able to travel down Route 66 as a part of the Hot Rod Power Tour, the world's largest rolling car show, starting with check-in at the Chicagoland Speedway. The start of Route 66 for us was Navy Pier in Chicago, this being the easternmost point of the highway known as the Mother Road (Route 66). Also known as America's Main Street, Route 66 is celebrating its 100-year Anniversary.
The first official day-one stop was Joliet, Illinois, at Route 66 Raceway. The raceway has a dragstrip allowing participants to race their cars as well as show them in the expansive parking lot. Joliet is on Route 66, and one of the photo stops on the tour was the Joliet State Prison; you might remember the prison as the one Jake Blues was being released from at the beginning of the Blues Brothers Movie. The first day of the tour was affected by severe weather as a result of a meteorological system known as a Derecho, affecting the Midwest. A Derecho is a land hurricane and can spawn tornadoes and extreme linear winds that can cause significant damage with very little notice. This cut our day short as we tried to move to a safer area.
After leaving the venue, we took the Power Tour Route to continue along Route 66 to Rantoul, Illinois, the next stop on the tour. Day 2 on Power Tour was a stop at the next day’s venue at the Village of Rantoul. The actual venue was on the grounds of the old Chanute Air Force Base that closed in 1993. The highlight of the day was the vendors midway and the autocross course where participants can race the clock and test the agility of their vehicles on a closed race course. The former airbase had plenty of room for cars and was also a venue used for automobile testing. The second day still had some weather issues, but when we left Rantoul, the tour started to get down to business.
The tour is a rolling car show with approximately 7000 cars participating each day. The organizers publish a route, and the general public sits along the route to watch the classic and show cars pass by. The participants are able to stop along the way to tour points of interest that are highlighted by the tour. One of the Power Tour traditions is handing out “Hot Wheels Cars” to children along the route. Children hold up signs to attract the attention of the tour cars that pull over to hand out the miniature cars as sort of a rolling trick-or-treat. We handed out dozens of cars to happy children along the route. After the tour, some children posted that they had accumulated a large number of cars from the tour and had donated some to local children that did not get to participate.
On day two, we stopped at a number of locations along Route 66: a diner in Atlanta, Illinois; a detour onto the memory lane section of old Route 66 in Lexington, Illinois, toured, the Sprague’s Super Service gas station in Lincoln, Illinois; Frank's old Route 66 Gas Station; and Williamsville, Illinois. We even stopped at the Normalsign in Normal, Illinois, just to prove we are truly normal. These are just some of the many eclectic stops along the route. Route 66 has a storied history, and next time we will delve more into the history of the road as well as a trip to the third stop on the tour as we travel further toward St. Louis, Missouri. We will visit some more unique stops as well as some unexpected detours.
