Off and Running West

On September 7th, we started our journey. We drove north from our summer home in Columbus to the old Lincoln Highway and turned west. It was a bright, sunny, and windy day with a high temperature in the low 80s. We passed through Beaverdam, Delphos and many other small towns built over the past 100 years along the original route of US 30. The greatest bonus of driving the old Lincoln Highway was the complete absence of trucks and gaggles of cars choking the roadway.

We made our first stop in Van Wert, Ohio at the Old South Tavern. We once saw a sign posted in a restaurant that read "Never Trust a Skinny Cook". One look at our barmaid/cook told us that we were in for a treat. She cooked up a thick baloney sandwich, burned a little on both sides, smothered in cheese, and dragged through the garden.

On the way from Delphos, Ohio to Van Wert we passed the Van-Del drive-in theater.

We also passed this old roadside attraction. It may have once had windmill blades attached at the top of the dome. I remember seeing similar buildings travelling with my family when I was a kid.

Like many town on the Lincoln Highway, Van Wert takes its heritage seriously as the above banner and this sidewalk insert attest.

We chanced upon this roadside church and graveyard. Nearly half of the grave stones marked the burial sites of children, all of whom died between 1875 and 1878, probably the result of a plague.

In Indiana, we saw this log cabin along the Lincoln Highway. It had been claimed and refurbished by a county extension agency.

The Lincoln Highway signs dot the roadside to confirm that the driver is indeed driving over history.

We stopped in the Down and Under bar in rural Indiana. They have old postal stamp vending machines that have been re-configured to dispense gambling tickets. Since the machine might be illegal I opted not to take a photo of the machines.

This photo shows the sheer delight in driving the old highways. You see no trucks, no heavy traffic, and inviting places to stop for a bite to eat while visiting with the local folks. Fields of corn and stands of trees grow right up to the edge of the road while train tracks run alongside. Often, we get the opportunity to wave to an engineer as a train passes by.

Mandy tries to steal an ear of field corn for a memento. Mother nature has her own anti-theft device. The stock wouldn't release the corn. She came back empty handed.

Table shuffleboard is a popular past time in taverns from Fort Wayne, Indiana to the heart of Iowa. We saw no dartboards, Foosball tables or bowling machines anywhere. Pool tables, however, still abound.

We followed the Lincoln Highway to the Chicago area where we spent our first night. On Wednesday, we left the Lincoln and motored north to continue our journey on un-named U.S. Route 20. Our first stop on Old 20 was here in Waterman, Illinois.

Small motels still exist along U.S. 20 like this on in Illinois although most have been converted to apartments.

Wind farms extend from central Illinois to all of Iowa. We could often see hundreds of these giants at once as we drove by thousands of acres of cornfields littered with windmills. As we drew close to the one in this photo, we estimated it to be at least 15 stories tall.

We crossed the Mississippi River at Clinton, Iowa.

Once on the Iowa side, we watched a tug position itself against the bow of a raft of 15 barges to guide the massive bundle between the bridge supports. The tug at the bow controls the bow by pushing back against the current and momentum in much the same way we might take a patient on a gurney down a steep ramp by positioning someone at the front to push back as well as guide.
More soon.