Day 49 Summer 2011 Road Trip

We awake to a very cloudy morning and the threat of rain.  We ate our breakfast and loaded up the car.  Karen took some more photos of the ducks and geese.

  

Only a few miles from our hotel is the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore so we went for a quick look see.  We stopped at the Visitor Center then went for a short walk along the beach.

  

 

We left  the Park and headed South for 10 miles to put us back on the Lincoln Highway.
Our first photo stop is the Fros Top Root beer sign in Valparaiso IN.

 

Some of the buildings as we drove through Valparaiso IN.

  

In Schererville IN we drove across the old Lincoln Highway concrete bridge that passes over Turkey Creek.

  

Our friend Pete C. owns an RV so we thought he would enjoy these next two photos.

 

Teibel’s Restaurant first opened in Schererville in 1929 and has been serving customers on the Lincoln Highway ever since.

 

Between Schererville and Dyer IN there is a “Lincoln Highway Ideal Section”  These “ideal sections” were created by the 1914 Lincoln Highway Association as examples of how the highway should be built. 
These are the specifications :

• a right-of-way 110 feet (34 m) in width
• a concrete road bed 40 feet (12 m) wide and 10 inches (254 mm) thick to support loads of 8,000 pounds (3,600 kg) per wheel
• curves with a minimum radius of 1,000 feet (300 m), banked for 35 mph (56 km/h), with guard rails at embankments
• no grade crossings or advertising signs
• a footpath for pedestrians

The most famous of the Ideal Sections is this 1.3-mile (2 km) "Ideal Section" between Dyer and Schererville in Lake County, Indiana. With federal, state, and county funds, and a US $130,000 contribution by United States Rubber Company president and LHA founder C.B. Seger, this Ideal Section was built during 1922 and 1923. Magazines and newspapers called the Ideal Section a vision of the future, and highway officials from across the country visited and wrote technical papers that circulated both in the United States and overseas. The Ideal Section is still in use to this day, and has worn so well that a driver would not notice it unless the marker near the road brought it to their attention.

  

Shortly after, we crossed from Indiana into Illinois.

 

Up till now it had been drizzling lightly but now we are driving through a downpour.

 

This part of the road has a small river flowing over it.

 

We arrive in Joliet Illinois still following the Lincoln Highway.  There is plenty of signage to lead the way.

  

The rain is letting up as we come into town.

  

We arrive at the Joliet Area Historical Museum.  We were here 3 summers ago when we concluded our Route 66 road trip.  That year we were looking for Route 66 souvenirs, however this time we are only interested in the Lincoln Highway souvenirs.   Can you believe that they have nothing related to the Lincoln Highway, well they had a couple of books and some childrens stickers, but that was it.  No hat pins, no postcards, to t-shirts, nothing.  They had one little brochure.  The Route 66 merchandise is everywhere, but nothing for the Lincoln.

 

I have commented on this in the past, the Lincoln is just not recognized and promoted to anywhere near the extent that Route 66 is.  It is unfortunate, but it is a fact.  More often than not we have found museums and other businesses that once promoted the Lincoln, to be closed.  There is very little promotional merchandise available for the travelling public who are following the old highway.  The highway is well marked in certain areas so it is fairly easy to follow.  I encourage you to get off the interstates and drive these roads that carried the travelling public throughout the USA.  You can’t see or experience anything if you only drive on the Interstates.

We concluded our Lincoln Highway road trip at the same spot in Plainfield Illinois where we started the journey on July 7, 2009.   This same spot is significant to us because it also marks the spot where we concluded our Route 66 road trip in 2008.  This spot is where the two roads share the same 3 blocks. 

 

This means that we have now driven the Lincoln from Exton Pennsylvania to the terminus in San Francisco California.  All we need to do now is to drive the section from Times Square NY to Exton PA and we will have completely driven the Lincoln Highway from beginning to end.

Our vacation does not end here today though… tomorrow we are going to head North and West and go to see the Mall of America in Minnesota.

To see all of our photos from today, you can find them all on our FLICKR site.