Route 66

We started our trip out with a full day of driving. We drove from our house to Indianapolis, IN, where we stayed in an Air Bnb for the night. We were a little over two hours out from the house we were supposed to stay in and had not received the code we needed to get in the house. Matt tried calling multiple times but the phone rang busy, sent emails and texts and got no response. He got on the phone to the booking agency who asked us to give them another hour. Matt refused saying we wanted our money back. They were refusing to do that without first checking with the home owners. He got off the phone and started trying to find another place to book. While he was in the process of doing that, they called back and said they couldn't reach them either. They agreed to refund our money and Matt eventually found another place. It was a stressful way to end a very long day (almost 12 hours with our few stops). Anyway, we spent the night there and the next morning drove about an hour to my sister's house where we spent some time with my nephew and my mom. My other nephew came in from work around 1:15 and we headed out at about 2. We had three and a half hours to drive to Pontiac, Ill. Once we got there Matt and I dropped Kayla and Elijah and ran out to grab a few groceries from Wal-mart. The house was big and comfortable and everything was only a few miles away. We ate dinner together and vegged the rest of the night.

Sunday morning we took our time getting ready. We had changed time zones which I hadn't realized we were going to do. A little before 8 local time Matt and I headed out to a local coffee shop, Cup & Scone. We got coffee and some pastries to take back to the house to share with Kayla and Elijah. I was excited because they had oatmilk and gluten free stuff.  At 9am local time we watched Heart City (Kayla's Church in Ohio) and enjoyed a morning of worship. When the service was over we headed out to the Route 66 Hall of Fame. It opened at 10am which is about what time church ended. 

As Matt and I had already been to "town" that morning we were pointing out all the small cars to Kayla and Elijah. They seemed to be everywhere and so cute. The whole town of Pontiac was cute and I would love to visit it again some day! Anyway, we were trying to get Elijah to get his picture taken in a car with Abraham Lincoln and he was having none of it. We thought it would be funny and he was just tired. So, Matt decided to stop anyway and he got in the car 😂 It was hilarious. Well, I was trying to get a picture and I was watching Matt's antics instead of watching where I was walking and I literally fell for Matt all over again 😂😂 Seriously, I fell. It hurt like anything but I just sat there taking pictures. I had missed the one I wanted (stupid fall) but Kayla got it!! We got back to the car and Kayla's like, "Did you fall?!" I'm like "yep, where's the first aid kit 😂." I refused to let that momentary blip ruin my time of exploring a new city. (I scraped the top of my foot, my big toe, tore my shin up, and bruised my knee, picture at the bottom doesn't really do it justice, it's still healing, but could have been so much worse!)

From there we headed to the Route 66 Hall of Fame museum, it was only a few streets over. We got our picture taken in front of the world's largest Route 66 sign, which is outside of the museum. The museum was free, which was great. We enjoyed our time in there, seeing stuff from the "olden" days and exploring the museum. In addition to the Route 66 paraphernalia the museum also had a local history exhibit, life in the 1940's exhibit, Music of the Civil War exhibit, the Bob Wildmire exhibit, a life on the Titanic exhibit, a small gift shop, and an exhibit dedicated to veterans. It was a lot to see but we really enjoyed it. The ladies running the museum were extremely helpful and friendly. One of them took us outside to be sure we didn't miss the biggest Route 66 sign, even taking our picture in front of it, and then telling us about other local things we should see. Since we had only planned one day (really part of the day because we had another 3.5 hours of driving ahead of us) there was no way we could see what all this little town had to offer. One of the things she suggested we see was their swinging bridges, they had 3. So, we left there and found a place to eat. This was MUCH harder than we had anticipated. I had done my research and planned a restaurant that had something we all could eat. What I hadn't counted on was the fact it was Father's Day, plus a Sunday, and the restaurant was only doing a buffet until 2. That did not work for me or Elijah. So, back in the van we went and onto another local place...they were closed...because it was Sunday. After looking several other places up we finally ended up at Dairy Queen 🤦 and even that was packed!! We ended up going through the drive-thru and taking our food to an empty parking lot that was close by, that had a VW bug that we wanted to get some pictures with. After eating, taking pictures, we headed to the swinging bridge. There was some kind of event going on at the park (again, Father's day!), so we just headed to the bridge, across the bridge, and back, getting pictures. We also stopped at an old gas station that had old cars set up and took some pictures there as well. After that we got in the car and started the 3.5 hours to the Wisconsin Dells, starting on Route 66 headed to Chicago. We are not crazy and didn't want to go through Chicago, there was nothing we wanted to see there (no haters, we are not baseball fans and we literally couldn't think of anything we wanted to see). Anyway, we were only supposed to drive 20 miles on Route 66 before switching routes, but we missed our turn and ended up driving Route 66 longer than planned, adding a bit of distance to our trip, trying to avoid Chicago.  If you ever get a chance to go to Pontiac Illinois, I highly recommend it. It really is a cute town and has so much to offer. We got to our hotel in Wisconsin Dells that evening. You can read about that adventure another day 😀

Have you ever been to Illinois? If so, what did you see? What did we miss? Like I said earlier, there were so many things we wanted to do, simply not enough time to do them all. This is only a small sample of the millions of pictures I took, enjoy! I included murals that were on the buildings in Pontiac.