Driving Route 66 Through Illinois

Matt & I decided to start our Route 66 journey this past July. While we didn't have a large amount of days to drive the full route (at this time), we decided to take a weekend to knock out part (if not all) of Illinois Route 66.

We really didn't research anything for this trip (I was waiting to research once we decided to drive the full route). Multiple Rt 66 Facebook groups have helped a ton. I also purchased the Rt 66 (yellow) App which was a huge help with the many points of interest along the way (as well as helping us stay on 66).

Saturday morning, we left the house around 4:30 am - planning to arrive in Chicago by 7:30. We were hoping to miss most of the weekend traffic, get our pictures at the start sign(s), eat breakfast and then hit the open road!

The sun is shining and the city is beautiful!

First stop was Navy Pier to locate the new Start sign. This sign was erected in March of 2026 but is not the official start (which is the intersection of Adams Street & Michigan Ave). The new sign location symbolizes a Pier-to-Pier connection with a starting point at Lake Michigan (Navy Pier) and ending at the Pacific Ocean (Santa Monica Pier). 

From Navy Pier, we drove to the official starting point at Adams & Michigan. We were lucky to get a parking spot right next to the sign (it was pretty quiet in the neighborhood). 

The Art Institute of Chicago is on the same corner. 

There's our little Lincoln, right next to the Start sign.

Time for Breakfast! We found parking near Lou Mitchell's and headed in. We were fortunate to get a seat right away (even if it meant sitting cafeteria style - sharing a long table to people to our immediate left and right. Gotta say that this is enough to unnerve 2 very introverted people!). We shared an omelet (which was delicious), enjoyed the decor and took some pictures before heading out.

We were shocked to see that a line had formed and it was wrapped around the corner - making us all the more thankful that we didn't have to wait for our table!

Getting back on Route 66, we headed south, seeing a few points of interest along the way. Most were just photo ops. Matt ended up pulling up Google Maps while I tried to figure out the Rt 66 Navigation App (a large city is not the time to figure out something new like that!). Hopefully we didn't miss too much on our drive into Joliet.

JOLIET

We spent a few hours in the Joliet area - walking through the Route 66 Park, stopping for photos and touring both the Visitor's Center and the Illinois Rock & Roll Museum on Route 66.

Elwood

Wilmington

Gemini Giant Park and a flooded Kankakee River

Braidwood

Gardner

Dwight

Odell

Pontiac

Lots of murals, miniature cars and swinging bridges. There was a classic car show setting up while we were there. We enjoyed walking around the town square, unfortunately the courthouse was under construction as well as the mural courtyard behind the Museum Complex (already closed for the day). We ended our time in Pontiac visiting the Swinging Bridges - only to find 2 of the 3 bridges were closed due to flooding. We already plan to head back to Pontiac for a day trip to see everything that we missed.

Route 66 Decommissioned Illinois State Police Headquarters, just south of Pontiac.

Chenoa

Lexington

Towanda

Day light was quickly fading as we drove into Towanda. We stopped for a few pictures and drove along Dead Man's Curve before driving into Bloomington/Normal for the night.

Bloomington/Normal

Day 2 of our trip down Route 66 started out a bit dreary, but a promise of no rain (so that was good!). We were excited to continue our trip - hoping to get to Springfield by late afternoon. Our stops included The Normal Theater, Carl's Ice Cream Factory, Ryburn Place/Sprague's Service Center, 66 Visitor Center (not open when we were there), the location of the first Steak & Shake Drive In (1934) on Main & Virginia (now a Monical's Pizza) and Power House Art.

We were back in the area a few weeks later and stopped in Bloomington, Funks Grove, Atlanta & McLean to see a few things that we missed on our first visit.

We drove by The House on Garling to check out the artwork. It was impressive! Definitely not our style of artwork, but impressive none the less! This is the same artist (Tom Kirk) who owns Power House Art (that we saw on our first trip). 

We loved the large rock turtle!

Funk's Grove

Can you find our names? Look on the right side, halfway down...next to the pink scribble. 

On our 2nd trip to Funk's Grove, we stopped at the Funk's Grove Rest Area off I-55 (accessible from both directions), Funk's Grove Cemetery & Stubblefield Homesite Memorial. 

At the cemetery, we searched for my Great Great Aunt - Elizabeth "Dadie" Nicholson Funk. We were thrilled to find her grave, next to her husband (George Funk - the Great Grandson of the founder of Funk's Grove, Isaac Funk. Isaac's grave is the first picture below).

Aunt Dadie (Elizabeth) Funk's stone is on the far left, next to her husband George and George's brother and sister.

After exploring the cemetery a bit, we drove to the Stubblefield Homesite Memorial, which is next to the cemetery.

The Chapel of the Templed Trees - We opted to not walk back during this visit. We were here in 2011 with the kids. Worth a short walk if you are in the area.

We highly recommend a visit to Funk's Grove Cemetery, Church, Stubblefield Homesite Memorial and Chapel. The area is extremely peaceful and full of history about Funk's Grove. The cemetery has so many beautiful, unique stones and is well cared for.

McLean

Atlanta

Pictures include our 2nd visit as well.

While Looking for Lincoln in 2011, we visited Atlanta and found Paul Bunyon with the kids.

Lincoln

Lincoln was a fun town to explore. We visited Lincoln with the kids a few times over the years, so not everything was new to us. However, when we visited before, we were in the Abe Lincoln mindset . . . now we are in the Rt 66 mindset! 

Matt & I re-created a few pictures from 2011 (sans kiddos)

The Museum of Rt 66 in Lincoln wasn't open yet when we visited (both times). Grand opening was set for mid July, so we will visit on our trip through Illinois as we start the Missouri section of Route 66 in September.

We set up the tripod to recreate a surprise photo bomb from 2011. Fun times! 

We heard that Lincoln and his wagon were moved downtown Lincoln - within a week of us visiting! We made a mental note to stop in Lincoln on our way south to start our 2nd stretch of Illinois Route 66. While visiting the new location for Lincoln & his wagon, we also found the a few more photo ops.

We will be back in Lincoln soon - the wagon wheels have now been attached and the fence has been erected. The Museum of Rt 66 has officially opened. We look forward to spending more time in Lincoln in September!

Broadwell

Elkhart

From 2011 - Looking for Lincoln (storyboard)

Williamsville

We decided that Williamsville would be our stopping point of this weekend trip. We had 2.5 hours of driving to get home, plus a dinner stop. With the next main city being Springfield, we figured this would be a good stopping point. 

A few weeks later we hit the road again, ready to try our hardest to finish the Illinois section of Route 66. We made a pit stop in Galesburg to visit their library (genealogy, local history section) to do some family research. We also planned to stop back in Lincoln for more photo ops before picking up where we stopped last time. 

We were so thankful to be on 66 as we traveled parallel to I-55, which was stopped and backed up for miles. 

Sherman

Wayside Park on Route 66 - it's hard to imagine a slower time in this country when this wayside park would've been full of travelers, stopping for a picnic lunch. 

Springfield

We have visited Springfield numerous times over the years with the kids (my sister also lived here for a short time). There is so much history in Springfield and the surrounding area! We've done all of the Lincoln "things", but surprisingly, we've never toured the capital building. That will need to be another trip, maybe in the colder months. 

We ended up spending a couple of hours in the Capital City. Walking around the capital building(s), Oak Ridge Cemetery (we've visited Lincoln's Tomb 3-4 times over the years...definitely worth it if you're in the area), eating at Cozy Dogs, seeing Big Ron at Motorheads and touring the state fairgrounds. The majority of our time was spent there, taking in the Illinois Rt 66 Experience. 

Matt, re-creating a picture of Maddie from 2016. Not too bad, considering he did it from memory!

Just south of Springfield & Lake Springfield, we found another original alignment and took some time to pull off the road and enjoy the quiet of the area. The road is skinny (as you can see in the last picture). As we passed the oncoming truck, we both had to use the shoulder to allow room to drive by each other. I can't imagine driving this road in the big vehicles that our grandparents drove - most of those vehicles were large (wide and boxy)! Our time of taking pictures was uninterrupted! We didn't see any other vehicles until we were driving away, a mile or two down the road. Such a crazy thought, considering we were driving parallel to I-55, less than a mile away!

Glenarm

Auburn

This section of road was one of our favorite parts of driving all of the Illinois section of Rt 66. The bricks were beautiful and the whole section of road was in great condition. We took at least half hour to drive the 1.4 mile section. We stopped a lot of times to take pictures and only had 2 or 3 cars go by during that time. 

Virden

Girard

Nilwood

Another favorite for Illinois - Turkey Tracks! We had this road to ourselves the whole time we were there (another 30 minutes!). 

Carlinville

We visited Carlinville on June 27, 2026 - We missed their zip code day celebration by one day!

As we drove out of Carlinville, I noticed a large campus - I mentioned it to Matt. I thought it was a church. As we passed this sign, I couldn't believe it! It was Lake Williamson - where our kids had attended church camp for many years!! We knew that the camp was in Carlinville, but had never seen it since the kids took buses to camp. We turned around and drove through the camp before hitting the road again. What a nice surprise!

Gillespie

Sawyerville

Sawyerville was our turning around point for the day. We had our hotel room reserved in Springfield (an hour back north). We stopped to grab a quick dinner than arrived in Springfield around 11:30 - we drove to the Fairgrounds and hoped that the lights would still be on and we wouldn't be locked out. We were in luck!! We enjoyed seeing the neon lights and signage. Even had a few other cars pull up while we were there (including security who just stopped, waved, and moved on). 

Springfield

Farmersville

Litchfield

Mt Olive

Staunton

We got to meet the mural artist, Joe Miller (and his dad) while we were walking around Staunton.

Livingston

We spent at least an hour at The Pink Elephant Antique Mall. We had fun exploring all of the odd photo ops, playing in the gift shop and exploring all of the antique booths. 

Watch out X-Files - I was abducted by aliens . . . then became one! Ha!

Hamel

Edwardsville

Mitchell

Granite City

Sad story - we stopped at Duke's for a treat. Matt chose one of these Route 66 sugar cookies. The worker was very friendly and chatted with us as we looked at the yummy treats. He gave us push pins to place on the map. Showed us a few things that we would enjoy for photo ops. We paid for our cookies and got in the car to leave. Excitedly, we dove into the bag and pulled out our cookies, only to find that Matt's cookie was wrong. We know that the cookie has a smiley face . . . but we had sad faces. Contrary to the picture, Matt wasn't mad . . . just sad. He isn't a huge icing person, but didn't want to complain to the store after the wonderful service we'd just experienced. He took a bit and decided it would be okay. Definitely wasn't his first choice but he said it had a light, lemony flavor to it . . . so something different and good. 

While taking pictures at Mr. Twist, Felicia (owner) opened the window and started chatting with us. It was a pleasant conversation and then she offered us a sample of their sherbert. We had just eaten the cookie so we weren't too hungry, but we are never one to turn down an ice cream sample! She passed the bowl of sherbert out to us - holy cow, it was filled! I took a bite and wow! It was delicious. I am not a sherbert person. Truly don't care for it . . . but her recipe was refreshing and so, so good! As she came out to take pictures with us, I had to tell myself to stop eating it because I was supposed to share it with Matt! Ha! Don't worry - I shared it and we both agreed that it was the best sherbert we'd ever had. 

Felicia's Mama - Mary (the sherbert was Mary's recipe)

Another neon park - hopefully we can visit it during the evening hours before we start the drive of the Missouri portion of 66.

Collinsville

We had visited St. Louis in October 2025. While there we did a few Route 66 "things", we walked across the Chain of Rocks Bridge, ate dinner in Granite City and stopped in Collinsville on our way home. Click here to read about that trip.

St. Louis

We crossed the Mighty Mississippi into Missouri, driving over the McKinley Bridge, taking us into St. Louis. We were on a time crunch and looked for a visitor center for the city/state. I had located a center downtown but Google said that it closed at 5. We had less than 30 minutes to locate parking as well as the center. We found street parking but never did find the visitor center. We ended up going in to Union Station to find a restroom and have a look - Wow! It was beautiful! We took a bunch of pictures and used the restrooms before heading back to the car. As we were getting ready to leave, the lights dimmed and then the music & light show started! What a treat!!! We had no clue that this was going to happen. Right place at the right time, for sure.

Once the light show was done, we headed back to the car to start our trek home. We still had 4 hours of driving plus dinner, gas & pit stops before officially calling it a day. What a fun time - 2 weekends, 4 full days spent on the Mother Road, driving through Illinois' cities and countryside. What a beautiful state we live in, full of history, beauty and quirk! 

Next month, we hope to drive Route 66 through Missouri, Kansas & into Oklahoma. Let the fun continue!