Crossposted from my DigitalRoute66.com blog.  We’re on the 2008 Illinois Route 66 Motor Tour right now.  Pictures are available on my Route 66 Flickr feed.

For a few minutes, at least, we thought Trailnet had abandoned us.

Mother Nature hadn’t. She moved her storms through earlier in the morning, emptying the last of her clouds quite politely over the Metro East highways in the last several hours before the scheduled start of the tour, keeping the sun under veil until the parade was about to begin. No problems from that old lady.

But Trailnet…

At 7:45 cars were starting to stack up in the median between the lanes of Riverview Drive, desperate for a place to park. The west side lot at the Chain of Rocks Bridge is more than adequate for the Motor Tour, especially in a light year like this – but only if Trailnet is there to unlock the gate.

Cell phones were whipped out; voice mails left. Plan B’s were quickly hatched; could we reassemble at the flea market and start from there?

“Oh, wow! You guys are early!” Clearly, times had gotten mixed up. The Missouri SUV sported a bike at the rear and a nice gentleman in a lime green shirt that said “Trailnet Staff”, easing the concerns of the gathered.

We’re in!

St. Clair County rep and Tour Grand Marshall Jerry Law got the festivities started at 8:30 sharp, and across the bridge we went.

The first tour stop was the Route 66 Flea Market in Granite City, just west of where Chain of Rocks Road crosses I-270. It was an optional stop, but I doubt few on the trip missed it: the parking lot quickly became full and up and down the rows of booths outside travelers browsed the variety of sale items, many of them throwing down a few dollars for a trinket or two.

It’s an interesting setup: the inside is quite small, with only a few dedicated booths filling the aisles to the south of where the business’s brass handed out coffee and donuts to eager 66’ers. But most of the activity was outside, where rows and rows of storage garages opened at 9:00 AM to reveal a collection of wares inside of each. Swords, love seats, elephant stools and Elvis paintings; what’s not to like?

The cruise between the flea market and the Rabbit Ranch took us through the center of unincorporated Mitchell, and the town folk gave us a hearty welcome. At the firehouse just east of the Luna Cafe the fireman were busy selling souvenirs, and further down at the strip mall and school residents had gathered in lawn chairs and hatchbacks of SUVs to watch and wave at the Mother Road travelers as they drove by. As we meekly waved from our ‘08 Malibu, it made us really wish, for their sake, that more classic cars were involved in the tour.

Rich Henry’s fear that the recent rains would wash out most of the parking at the Rabbit Ranch proved to be unfounded. IDOT had mowed along the east side of the Staunton Bypass, and it didn’t take long for a number of cars to line the sides of Route 66 and slow down gawking locals as they undoubtedly wondered what was happening at the place with all the half-buried VW Rabbits.

What was going on was a lot of business for the awesome little gift shop; one could barely move inside as Rich Henry rapidly rang out patron after patron while more tourists mingled outside, pausing to get their passport stamped and to pose for pictures. Back inside Montana the Rabbit, the seven year old presidential candidate, huddled meekly at the counter, somewhat startled by the sudden influx of human activity. A sign advised that pictures, even with flash, were welcome, but no touching – not today, at least. It was just too much for the next president to handle.

Shunning the directions in the passport book, we took the Staunton Bypass all the way to Staunton Road, planning to make a left into town and catch Route 4 that way. A few classic cars cruised in front of us and went straight across Staunton Road, heading towards Mount Olive on the Litchfield Alignment. The other tourists behind us followed them, perhaps heading over to see the other classic cars along I-55, or, perhaps, lost. We later spotted the crowd of classics in Girard, so no matter what the story ends well.

Gillespie tried to derail 66ers further by closing off much of Route 4 through town to make room for their Black Diamond Days festival. The annual town party celebrates the town’s coal mining heritage, and with the tilt-a-whirl firmly planted along the downtown stretch the Motor Tour was forced to follow small orange detour signs down

North of town, we were promised the Honey Creek Bridge would be open. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that we were advised that the bridge might be open. It wasn’t. We, and plenty others, ignored the orange warning sign and headed down the path, turning around amidst the mud and passing other oncoming tour cars, the road barely large enough to support the width of two modern automobiles

I assembled a selection of about one-hundred and fifty 50’s and 60’s tunes into an iPod playlist entitled “Crusin’” to help us on our way; XM’s 60’s on Six is usually a good friend, but today required stepping things up a notch.

Somewhere north of Carlinville, while watching carefully for the multitude of 90-degree turn alignments that skirt off to the east, we got behind a later model Ford Thunderbird with the Illinois tags “Baby T.” What would happen to pop up on the random shuffle at that point but the Beach Boys’ “Fun Fun Fun.” Sometimes your MP3 player just…knows.

People take their passports very seriously.

Girard rolled out the red carpet for the Motor Tour, with a town cop parked along Route 4 to make sure that traffic found its way to the village square. There at the pavilion was a feast of pork chops (which, according to the buzz, were quite tender and tasty,) brats and hot dogs with chips, drinks and cookie and pastry treats. Locals mixed with the 66ers, with one young lad nervously carrying his selection up to the pay table and asking if this “passport” thing he’d heard about was necessary to purchase food. Moments later he left happily, hot dog in tow.

On the west side of the square was Doc’s Soda Fountain, a classic establishment that does not let down its chosen name. With a modern (but still, somehow, period-looking) bar at the front and a bevy of antique items towards the back the store is a treat for those in search of history or just younger folk yearning to quench their desire for lactose. The seating is most likely enough for most days, but even with the park gazebo still spilling over onto the grass Doc’s was likewise overflowing with out-of-towners downing shakes and sundaes.

It was there that, after I polished off a single yummy scoop of chocolate, I excused myself to use the gentleman’s room and returned to find my party had exited into the square. They’d remembered to grab my digital camera, but not my passport, and the next few minutes were spent scrambling around central Girard trying to find this most valuable collection of papers. Overhearing our phone call to the parents, a helpful lady inside Doc’s let us know that she’d turned in a passport left on a table to the management there – and we were instantly reunited with our guidebook. As adamant as we were to find it, our fellow travelers were just as set that others along the tour weren’t separated from their book of stamps.

It’s not a race, it’s a cruise, and after each stop the traffic separates itself more and more and you encounter less and less of your fellow Mother Roaders. After Girard the gulf was exacerbated further as different groups departed from lunch at different times to head towards Williamsville. While we had a handful of cohorts on the Donaldson Road turkey track trek, our jaunt down the Auburn brick was a lonely one; the only company was a pair of doves that darted out of our way before being crushed into the red brick below. The lonesome journey continued north through Chatham, home to a small classic car show just to the east of old 66, and onto Springfield where any hope to find, and stick by, fellow 66ers would be easily defeated by the snarling modern monster that is Veteran’s Parkway.

Williamsville was awesome. The small community played host to a passport stop at their village museum housed in two old railroad cars, and we were greeted not only with enthusiastic smiles but also with lemonade, cookies, a gift bag and a rather thick paperback book detailing the history of the village – all free. As one of the first to breeze through, we advised them that we were at the head of the pack, and that plenty more would come.

They seemed ready and legitimately delighted.

With time to kill before the regroup at Broadwell and the parade into Lincoln, we briefly explored Elkhart, taking Logan County Highway 10 to the east to the cemetery where Illinois Governor Richard Oglesby was laid to rest. The cemetery sits on Elkhart Hill, and towards the base was an amazing old railroad bridge that compressed the county road by just a bit and rose just over twenty-one feet above the pavement. Quite the side trip.

Back on 66, the Pig Hip was hopping as we lined up to cruise north to The Mill. Locals were selling wooden pieces of the building for $10 each to support the restoration of the building; a new roof has been applied but much work remains to be done. A tour of the interior testifies to this; it was in awful shape.

There’s a reason why the Illinois Route 66 Hall of Fame has so many restaurants in it: the road is all about food. It was apropos, then, that dinner was tremendous, a huge all-you-can-eat buffet with chicken fried steak and meat loaf. The banquet went well, and as we cruised home KMOX offered just a little bit of static as the 50,000 watt Voice of St. Louis offered a Chubby Checker tune as part of Randy Raley’s Route 66 Radio – the perfect Saturday night treat to wrap up day one of the ’08 Motor Tour.