Day 3 - Feeding the Horses
Funks Grove was our first stop, that's the sugar maple trees that produce Sirup.
Six generations of Funks have lived in this area and there was plenty of evidence of the earliest clan from many years ago.
The brown mud puddles and paddocks of less than a week ago were giving way to green corn pushing it's way toward the sun... and that also brought a return to the temperatures in the late 20's we had hoped for.
Not far away in Atlanta, Coffee and Pie was the order of the morning at Palms Cafe.
But then the Cosy Dog Drive-in at Springfield was an early lunch so we slapped back an Ed Waldmire Corn Dog and were back on the road to Lincoln, the place where President Abe Lincoln once practiced law.
Our mate wasn't taking the law into his own hands but he did put a couple of guns in the hands of those who'd never experienced the weight and feeling of a Magnum 44 (unloaded of course).
His offsider had a classic gangster era piece... slimmer, lighter and more easily concealed in their pockets as required in those halcyon days.
The Red Brick road at Auburn is a reminder of the old days too... the hand laid bricks still supporting the traffic, both local and tourist, that wanders over this one mile stretch of original alignment.
Bill Deck chatted about his grandfather's drug store in Girard, a highlight for most but perhaps Bill's highlight was going for spin around town in a Mustang before we searched out the Turkey Tracks. No matter how he tried Rex couldn't match his footprint to the 1926 Turkey...
... so we moved on through Illinois toward the border with Missouri. Through Gillespie, where the old ballroom no longer sits after a fire destroyed it four years ago. Al Capone built it for his grandmother who lived in town and apparently the builder, who failed to pay all his sub contractors ended up at the bottom of a nearby lake with concrete gumboots.
On the promise of feeding horses, the girls had studiously resisted the temptation to eat their apples from breakfast...
... only to discover the Pony Ranch wasn't quite what they expected. Their disappointment was met with equal enthusiasm by the boys who wandered through the back fields full of rusting 60's and 70's 'ponies'.
Tim and Shawn confirmed there are in fact close to 300 decaying wrecks in amongst the trees that will shortly be no more as they look to wind their business up after 37 years of building and restoring Mustangs. So another Route 66 icon will soon disappear but the memories and stories, just like the Gillespie Ballroom will live on in the minds of those who experience the mother road.
Ray's lifetime dream to go cruising in a convertible with the top down and a car load of girls came true as we set off for dinner at the Bull & Bear to top off Day 3.
