Illinois is a really, really long state from north to south!  Today we made about 175 miles because of the number of things to see.

After a restful night and breakfast in Pontiac, IL we “decamped” from the Best Western around 8:30 AM.  We spent about 2 hours walking around the downtown area viewing many of the murals that had been painted on the outside of many buildings.  We spent time in the Pontiac Oakland Automobile museum and the Walldogs sign painting museum.  We also explored the Artcars that the town had sponsored artists to decorate.  By 10:30 we were on historic Route 66 heading SW to take in other sites and gather some more geocaches.

Towanda was our first stop–and an unanticipated one at that!  We found a really olde route 66 section that had been converted to a bike trail.  The really neat thing that prompted us to stop was the presnece of some  Burma Shave signs that you read while driving by.

Moving on to Normal, we took in Sprague’s Super Service gas station.

Funk’s Grove was another unanticipated find on the route.  At this small attraction outside of town, maple sirup was made.  Now you may wonder at the spelling, but apparently in earlier times, sirup was made from boiling down the the juice from maple trees whereas syrup is made from adding sugar to the  fruit juice.

We next stopped in the town of Atlanta.  The primary objective here was to locate a geocache.  Since it was near time for lunch we determined to eat at the Palms Grill Cafe which is frequently referenced on Route 66 information sites.  We had pulled pork BBQ (that should be no surprise) with homemade chips and baked beans.  But we split the lunch and also had homemade peach pie.  Both were delicious!  We also saw a large Paul Bunyon statue holding a hot dog on loan from it’s owner.  The geocache was found after some more reading on geocaching.com and some additional time spent looking for it!

The town of Lincoln has the world’s largest covered wagon.  For us, not so impressive and we didn’t find the geocache that was located on the wagon!  We also discovered The Mill an original sandwich shop.  We met one of the owners while taking photos of the site who offered us an inside look.  It is a project under restoration and hopefully will result in both a Route 66 museum and a WWII museum because the addition to the original structue came from a US Army barracks that was procured to make the site a larger food service facility.

In Springfield we were discouraged by Illinois State Fair traffic.  We did get to see Bill Sheas filling station (closed) and the Dana Thomas Frank Lloyd Wright house (closed).  We took the opportunity to photography both of them.

Next was Litchfield where we found a geocache at the Ariston restaurant and took photos of the neon signs out front.  Some incoming customers asked if we’d like to have our photo taken together and so we did.  We also saw the Rout 66 Museum outside and photographed it, but it was closed by the time we got to town.

Moving on we arrived in Mt. Olive where we visited Soulsby’s Shell Station and took some photos.  The geocache that was hidden there remained undiscovered by us!

So the last planned stop for the day was Staunton to visit Henry’s  Rabbit Ranch.  Once again, we were unsuccessful finding the geocache.  Henry apparenlty is taken with VW Rabbits as there were a number buried nose down in the dirt–a la Cadillac Ranch!  Joyce knew, but was giving me a surprise–there were no breathing rabbits present!

Edwardsville for the night.  Got a Comfort Inn on Priceline for $69 (+ tax of course).

Nighty, night!