Pat & Jennifer's Honeymoon on Route 66

Day 1: Friday, June 14, 2002
Speedway, Indiana to Fenton, Missouri

We weren't married until September 14, 2002, but we decided to take our honeymoon ahead of time. Jennifer just moved to Speedway from the Chicagoland area and wouldn’t have any vacation time at her new job in September after the wedding, so we took our trip early. We’re both a couple of road warriors at heart, and both of our fascinations with the lore of Route 66 is how we met to begin with. But that’s another story! So it was natural that we would take our honeymoon on Route 66. Upon hearing Indipala SS (an Impala SS club in Indianapolis to which Pat belongs), was having a caravan to St. Louis for Impalapalouis on the same day we’d be leaving for our trip, we decided it’d be neat to follow along, since we planned on staying in nearby Fenton, Missouri that night anyway.

After only 2 1/2 hours sleep, we started our journey at 9:15 AM heading west on I-70 to meet up with members of the club in Plainfield.  We arrived at Plainfield at 10am just in time for the caravan to leave. It took a little longer to pack Pat's ‘93 Caprice LTZ for the cross country trip than he had thought. But once we were there, we were met by Indipala prez Dave Bass and Dodie Sheffield. As the caravan took off, we brought up the rear. We must admit the bumper to bumper traffic at 70+mph (with the occasional brake tapping!) on I-70 was a bit much for Pat's 34 year old heart to take, so we bailed off I-70 after entering Illinois and took the remainder of the trip on the much less congested and slower U.S. 40.

Early in the afternoon, we stopped in Effingham, Illinois for lunch at Woody's Restaurant in the Dixie Trucker's Home truck stop. Upon leaving the restaurant, Pat's keen sense spotted a Corvair behind the restaurant. After discussing the car with the gentleman at the garage where it was parked, we jumped back on U.S. 40 and continued our southwest trek along the Old National Road, through such Illinois towns as St. Elmo, Mulberry Grove and Pocahontas, before entering Collinsville. We met up with some of the club members at the hotel and headed on to our hotel in Fenton. 

Leaving the hotel, we ventured across the Mississippi River into Missouri where we stayed for the night at the Fairfield Inn. After checking in, we rested a bit, then we went back into St. Louis to have a frozen custard at Ted Drewe’s, where they’ve been making frozen custard on Route 66 since the 1940’s. We met our fellow Route 66 e-group member Emily Priddy for a concrete.  We had a great visit, we ended up talking for about two hours!

On our way back to the hotel, we needed to stop at Walgreen's to pick up a Styrofoam cooler and other supplies, and we stumbled upon a St. Louis delicacy called St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake. For something that wasn't even chocolate, it was so decadent!!  LOL

We went back to our hotel, and called it a night, since we wanted to get an early start tomorrow.