The Sandcastle

When we entered the museum the woman at the ticket desk said the video was about to start in case we wanted to see it so we hurriedly paid and went upstairs. The video was good and it led us into well developed displays of the history of Joliet, Illinois. When we finished that exhibit we realized we had not seen the "Route 66 Experience" we had come for. Turns out it was on the main floor and free. So we spent some time watching Route 66 highlights on the "drive-in movie" screen.

Then we took pictures of ourselves at a "drive-in restaurant" and with the Blues Brothers.

The stretch of Illinois Highway 53 south of Joliet, also known as Historic Route 66, is normally four lane divided but due to road construction, half of it is closed so there is two-way traffic on the remaining two lane section providing much of the feel of the old Route 66. The road soon dropped to two lanes for real but the shoulders made it feel wider than I remember the road being when I was growing up in Illinois.

We stopped at the Launching Pad Drive In restaurant in Wilmington, Illinois, for lunch where I took this picture of the "Gemini Man".

The Gemini Man is what is known as a "muffler man". These statues usually had one hand facing up and one facing down. The most well known ones were holding a muffler. Through the years many of them have been modified to hold other things or had their poses changed even more. But the category as a whole is still called "muffler man".

Trying to get back out of the Launching Pad's parking lot made me glad we have a small RV. Dave did a good job of putting the View through a wye turn to get us back out, though.

Then we backtracked a bit to the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. This is a former Army Ammunition Plant that is in the process of being restored to prairie grasses. Here's some pictures of a couple of the things I found to be interesting there.

 

The list of people using the prairie included this timeline:

1600 American Indian hunters

1680 Explorer Marquette and Joliet

1840 Settlers/Farmers

1850 Workers building railroads

1860 People escaping slavery via the Underground Railroad

1940 Surveyor planning the Army ammunition factory

2001 bird watchers

Then we went out to see the seed beds where they grown the seeds they will use to restore the prairie. Again I was glad we have a small RV. Even then our View hit low-hanging tree branches going into and coming out of the area.

Finally, we headed over to one of the Des Plains Fish and Wildlife Areas where we planned to camp for the night. OK, not so finally. It was 82 degrees at 3:30 in the afternoon. Usually, if we camp in that heat we turn on our A/C for awhile. But there are no power outlets in the campground and turning on our generator in this peaceful place felt very wrong. So we drove a bit further to Kankakee River State Park where we have an electrical hookup for $20/night. Of course it rained during the drive over here which dropped the temperature down to where we only need the fan. Life is like that sometimes.

TTYL,

Linda