Let's Not and Say We Did

Have I mentioned that, among all of the unrelated and ridiculous jewelry you can buy in Chicago gift shops, I did not see any jewelry boasting a shiny replica of the Chicago bean. Of course, one never finds what one hopes to find. Perhaps the bean is copyrighted, as any other work of art would be.

You can get bean jewelry online but the beans are shaped like vegetable beans.

In Lincoln, Illinois, there is a building with a telephone booth on the roof. In the tour book there was a picture of a different picture right next to that paragraph so I was led to believe the booth was inside the dome of the courthouse. The nice man who showed us the beautiful domed ceiling of the courthouse pointed us across the street to the city hall, a brick building...with a white, glass-walled telephone booth right on the roof. (It would've been cooler if it was blue since I'm a Doctor Who fan.)

We walked inside knowing they were planning on taking it down soon for "safety" reasons but asked to go up anyway. The person up front was a woman so we couldn't flirt at all to make our way up the stairs. She said no. (So I guess it's for the best it wasn't blue!)

Somewhere along the road after that we were passing through yet another lonely agro-industrial town-village and nearly drove by this gloriously kitschy route 66 junk storefront. There was a big sign, a few old cars out front, lots of lawn ornaments, a Betty Boop poster next to one of Marilyn Monroe, lots and lots of old gas station signs, a couple of old pumps, and a sign that said, "open all the time, except when closed."

We took lots of pictures, then moved on.

We most recently saw a giant sculpture of a green and yellow frog up the hill from us on our side of the road. Before that, there was a pink elephant wearing hipster glasses. I write these down because these things are smack on the side of the road with no place to stop and get out to take pictures. It's also cold and we also don't have all the time in the world.

When we got to Springfield Illinois, our magnificent tour guide Jennie took us around the house former President Lincoln owned with his wife and I believe four children (one died very young). I was very impressed by how much of the interior was original.

Maybe it's just because I'm older now, but the tours I've been on are incredibly more I interesting than I have expected.

There's a place called Carlinville (which I imagine is a bit like Levittown) where there is a large remnant of houses installed right out of the Sears catalog.  People could pick a house, order it, and have it built by sears, and here in Carlinville was a whole neighborhood if we were willing to drive 24 extra miles.

Nope.

We'll look up pictures later.

Right before Saint Louis there is supposed to be a super-long walking bridge called Chain of Rocks bridge. And I couldn't help but sing "chain chain chaaain....chain of rooocks"

This bridge is difficult to find in the dark with contradicting signs and directions. We found a bridge but it didn't look like the one in the picture and so I will refer to grandpa's legendary joke statement (because I'm pretty sure he never actually did this) "let's not and say we did." Therefore: we saw Chain of Rocks bridge and moved on to Saint Louis.