Heading South

Wednesday, October 15^th we had to say good bye to my brother and head for home. We plan to take our time, but decided to head south to get out of the cold and rainy weather! Our two adventures for today were losing one of our windshield wiper blades (I didn’t know that the wipers would work with only one blade while the other one went back and forth in the air!)

After we replaced that we went tooling down I-46 to I-39. As soon as we entered Illinois it turned into a toll road. That was a shock and, since I, the great navigator, was navigating we ended up driving through all the busy streets of Rockford, to rejoin the Interstate south of town where it was no longer a toll road. My husband, the true navigator, informed me we should have just stayed on I-39 for that little bit of toll!

We spent some time driving the Great River Road, which is Highway 29, along the Illinois River. It was very beautiful, lots of trees in all their colored finery, and glimpses of the river banks and hills.

I wanted to try to find some more of our family history in Illinois – but I did not have much luck. On Thursday we ended up in Springfield and spent some time trying to do research, again with no luck. But we enjoyed walking around the historic neighborhoods and visiting their beautiful cathedral, the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. It had very unusual stained glass windows made or glass mosaics depicting biblical and historical scenes.

So, we spent the rest of the day driving south and west towards St. Louis. It seems like all the roads have to have a special designation, We spent a lot of time on the Great River Road (although, I think it may have been different rivers). We also were paralleling Route 66, of great fame. We spent the night in Collinsville, IL.

Saga to be continued!