Travel Day

It was hard to believe but today was our travel day down to Bowling Green, KY to see Gerry's cousin & husband from Croatia.  We met Jeanie, Dick, & Sue at Jubelts Restaurant in Litchfield, IL for breakfast.  It is one of our favorite stops since they have the best pastry in the area, plus a decent breakfast.  It is located next to the Ariston Cafe and is quite old also.  

After breakfast we stopped by a Florist shop to get a flower arrangement for the gravesite of Gerry's parents and then drove back to Gillespie to pack up and hit the road.  We had a great time in Gillespie and enjoyed seeing all the relatives and friends.  Too bad we only get to see them once a year since we always enjoy their company.

We stopped by the cemetery and then pointed the car south for Bowling Green, KY which was about 300 miles away.  It was an easy 6 hour drive and we got settled in and called Melita to setup a meeting for Wednesday morning.  Then it was off to bed for a much needed good night sleep.

We did get a nice picture of a country church on the way down to here.  

Route 66

We survived the family gathering and decided to see some old Rt 66 sights in the immediate area.  We grew up living within 9 miles of Rt 66 and traveled the old road all the time.  To us it was just another highway in the area and a good place to go out and race at top speed.  There weren't any speed limits in the 50s so racing was a popular past time.  Hard to believe we survived it.

The Ariston Cafe in Litchfield, IL was a favorite place of ours to eat when we were younger.  It was on the "Old" Rt 66 and has been situated there since 1935.  There was an earlier version across the street from this one but it was on leased property.  

Soulsby's Shell station in Mt. Olive, IL is also on the "Old" Rt 66 and has been there for many years.  We met the owner of the station about 10 years ago and still remember when it was an operational gas station.  He also repaired TV's had a room full of vacumn tubes in the gas station.  He has since passed away and I wonder what happened to all those old tubes.

A short distance away is the old Crossroads Cafe that sat right next to Rt 66 and has been in operation for as long as I can remember.  It is still a very busy spot and you can find my brother in just about every day that he is in the area.  It was originally a shiny metal diner and has been added to with a small dining room.  The serve good meals at a very reasonable price.  The red truck in front is my brothers pickup truck.

A better writeup of Soulsbys and the Ariston Cafe can be found at the following website.
http://www.theroadwanderer.net/66Illinois/litchfield.htm 

We were running around the contryside west of Gillespie, Il geocaching a took a short drive over to Beaver Dam State Park to visit with Gloria & Doug who were spending the summer camped at her brothers house.  He made them a very nice full hookup site and they even have a boat next to their motor home.  

We were heading back to the Litchfield area for dinner when it was decided to eat dinner at the Beaver Dam State Park concession stand.  Jeanie, Curt, Dick, Sue, Gerry and I went there for dinner.  The food was good and company even better.

Throw in geo caching for an hour or two and we were two very tired people.  There are a number of small country cemeteries around Gillespie and I have ancestors buried in a number of them.  One such cemetery is the Morrison Cemetery with about 75 graves in it.  It is very well maintained, however it is difficult to find and even more difficult to get to.  It just so happened that there was a geocache in the cemetery so we followed the GPS and it took us right to it.  The road got progressively worse and we were driving between two cornfields for the last mile or so.  See for yourself.

The bed really felt good that evening.

Family Gathering

Sunday was the day of the family gathering at Jeanie & Curt's house.  Almost all of the nieces, nephews and other relatives came to their house for a party.  When I say all, I mean 53 people in the house, sunroom and pool area.  There were 28 children under the age of 15 and 25 adults up to the age of *&.  We managed to talk to most of them but the kids were more interested in running around playing with each other.  I don't blame them, us old people aren't much fun.  We took many pictures but there were so many people there that we can't put them all out here.  So, I am only posting the picture below as representative of the gang.  We had a great time.

Road Signs

Friday was a long day for us with making the drive from Ohio to Illinois, visiting and getting to bed very late.  We continued to collect state welcome signs except for Ohio where we got this photo on the way out.  One of these days we will have all of the lower 48 states to go along with the Alaska welcome sign.  Hard to get a photo of the Hawaii welcome sign from a car.

Indiana was more cooperative and Gerry got a good shot of it after letting a big truck clear the view.  Getting a truck out of the view is very difficult on I-70 due to the extremely high number of trucks on the road.  At least the state is flat and they can pass each other fairly quickly, unlike eastern Ohio with their small hills that cause a lot of congestion due to trucks passing each other.

Illinois doesn't spend a lot of money on their signs welcoming you to the state.  We almost missed this sign since it was on the overpass.  It is always good to get back into Illinois even though we moved away 53 years ago.  I still refer to it as home while Gerry corrects me to say Maryland is home now. 

We went out to dinner with our niece Jeanie, my brother Dick and his friend Sue at a small Italian restaurant in Gerry's hometown of Benld, IL.  It is very small, but has excellent food and service.  This was our reward for having dinner there.  It tasted as good as it looks.  Trust me!

Road Trip

Gerry and I left the cabin today around 1:30pm for our trip to Illinois.  We had made reservations at a motel near Springfield, Ohio so there wasn't any reason to leave real early.  It took us 7 1/2 hours to drive the 400+ miles to the motel.

We got on I-68 near Hancock, MD and headed west through some very pretty mountains.  Along the way we had to cross over Sideling Hill just west of Hancock and it is neat to see how much they cut into the mountain in order to keep the grade reasonable.  

A short distance away is a very pretty farm nestled in the side of the mountain.  It is beautiful in the winter with all the snow as a backdrop.  Cold too!  The road through this area has some steep climbs and sharp descents.  Not bad in a car but a little more difficult in the motorhome.

The Pennsylvania Welcome Center in I-79 has a statue to John L. Lewis to honor the coal miners.  PA is undermined by large coal fields and was/is heavily unionized.  John L. Lewis got his start in Panama, IL which is about 15 miles from where Gerry and I were born.  He was there a number of years and then moved to bigger things and more palatial digs.  The area around Panama broke away from his union and started the Progressive Mine Workers union causing a lot of problems for the miners in the area.


We had an uneventful drive and made very good time.  We missed rush hours and the traffic was light for the most part.  Other than a gas stop, a Russell Stover candy stop, and dinner it was a great drive.