I woke up early to make it downtown to St. Louis to see the Gateway Arch. My Route 66 navigation app is terrible because it decided to take me into Illinois across the river before turning me around and back into Missouri. I walk up to the arch, pull out my camera, and think, ” Oh, this is huge”. I walked back through the park so I could get the entire arch in frame. For a holiday weekend, I was surprised that it wasn’t all that busy. I’m too afraid of heights to actually go to the top of the Arch, though. I’d probably have a panic attack in the elevator. I am perfectly fine getting photos from the base.
I don’t think I realized that Busch Stadium was right down from the arch. So I walked down to the ballpark. Cardinals were out of town, so no baseball for me today. That’s ok, Cubs are playing a Friday afternoon game this week. I’ll be in the beachers for that. I took an Uber back to my car because the sun had come out and gotten warm, and I didn’t feel like walking back up the inclines I had walked down.
After more bad navigation from this stupid app. I ended up back in Southern Illinois. The route here was very long and flat. This made getting between towns pretty fast, thankfully. Most of the stretches so far have been windy and have kept my speed to a minimum. In the mid-afternoon, I was beginning to think for once on this trip I might not actually stumble upon anything else of interest. I made it into Springfield, the second one in a week, still no Simpsons, though. I drove by a park that was blocked off and realized that Lincoln was from Illinois, and they may have been something for him. So I turn a block up and see the beautiful Illinois Capitol building down at the end of the road I turned on. I stopped by for a minute, before making my way back to the park I saw.
This was the home of Lincoln a two-block stretch of Springfield, turned National Monument. Lincoln’s original house sits on the corner, and then you can walk down the block to see some old parade wagon, with an Honest Abe campaign poster posted to the side of it. When I was walking back to my car, I saw a pretty orange monarch butterfly. It had been years since I’d seen one.
Before I left Springfield, I passed the Illinois State Fairgrounds, with a large neon display saying “The Route 66 Experience”. I flip around to see what this is. From the road, I could see brightly colored elevated chair lifts, like you might see from an old World’s Fair in the 50s and 60s.
You pull into the fairgrounds and there is an entire park full of neon signs, old billboard signage, the red barns with paved “roadways” and sidewalks that you can walk around the park on. Each of these barns had a different little exhibit detailing the history of Route 66. There were a couple of families with kids running around and playing, as the parents took in the exhibits. I thought about how, as a kid, I would do the sme. I wasn’t interested in learning while on a trip; I wanted to go to Six Flags. But now I take my time, reading all about the road through Illinois. I’ll probably read even more about all my stops once I get home. I just take in information nowadays for no particular reason, other than that I’m a curious soul.
I decided to sit around for a little bit, as dusk set in and the buzz and lights of the neon signs came alive. The dusk provided a good backdrop to the lights. It gave a blue context to the area around the signs. Most times I photograph neon, it’s in the dead of the night. Sometimes the glow will give you a faint hint of the building it’s placed on.
Neon is one of my favorite subjects to shoot, in particular, very unique signage. It’s a lost craft, especially in the days now, where people can print Signs and throw LEDs into them to make a bland seizure of color rotating through the LED color spectrum. The way a neon tube hums to life, the intricacies of the tubes bending in and out of the painted frames of the sign. The signs look cool in the day if done right, but really do impress so much more in the dark. For me, it’s like a special thing for a night owl like myself; I can drive around a city just looking for the signs.
It’s a piece of Americana that really touches the nostalgic part of my brain. I don’t know if that comes from my childhood trips, where my parents would go to a casino while my sister and I played in the arcade rooms. The bright flashing lights shone through the window from the casino floor into the room.
Part of me wishes I could do this trip at night in full. Sleeping in hotels during the day and being able to check out at 7pm. I made it a point to seek out neon whenever I stopped, and there has been plenty to see. There are also a lot of stops, like in the southwest, which I just missed because it was midday.
I’m writing this entry the morning of Day 22, from a coffee shop in Normal, Illinois, before I head for Chicago. I’m staying in the same apartment that I did when I lived in Chicago for a month in 2018. I’m looking forward to being back in the city, but it is a little bittersweet. This means I’ve reached the end of Route 66, twenty-two days later. I’ve traveled down the west coast, east to the heart of the country. Nearing 5,000 miles on the car, and soon after this week, I will be heading west once again. I’ll miss this freedom of being on the road; no responsibilities for the past 3 weeks have been a relief. I just need to focus on the road and nothing else. Soon this whole adventure will end.
