Illinois is Overrated

Well, I went out and got a copy of Rand McNally's The Road Atlas 2007 (Large Scale). Right away I know a few things we won't be doing. We're not being purists about this, and so we will not be starting our journey from Lake Shore Drive and Jackson, but rather from the parking lot of the O'Hare Avis counter. Traffic around the airport is sure to be a zoo, and I'm certain that after a flight from New York the last way I'd want to start a vacation would be to drive into the heart of Chicago, only to turn around (if that's even remotely possible at that location) and drive back out. Even a driving vacation.

So we'll probably take 294 down to 55. There's a dark gray line running parallel to 55 all the way to Normal, which picks up again outside Bloomington, then seems to end just outside Springfield. At one point there was a state route designation for it: 53.

So I'm going to have to hit the EZ66 guide just to find the damned road anywhere. Now, I realize it no longer carries any official US route designation, but don't you think the nation's cartographers would point it out? It's pretty a well known road after all. It's got a song. It had a TV show. They point out where Stanley Marsh planted his Cadillac Ranch outside Amarillo, and that place only got a song (and maybe a video, but that's a one-off, not like a series). But no, Randy Mac can't tell me that US 66 is SR 53 through most of Illinois, and then seems to change its number both randomly and haphazardly all the way to St. Louis. Too many numbers, guess.

So we'll most likely take 55 straight down to Springfield, then check out the Abe Lincoln boneyard. And isn't it interesting the way Illinois usurped Lincoln? Have you ever wondered, like me, what physical claim (well, okay, other than possession of his actual dead body in a crypt) Illinois has on the railsplitter from Kentucky? How did Illinois become the 'Land of Lincoln'? Land of Lincoln's grave I can understand. And that's one thing, perhaps the only thing, in Illinois I'm looking forward to.