Road trip: Tasting ‘Road Foods’ along Route 66
Friday July 25 2008 By Lori Gysel & Gerry Kenter Dave is writing today...
I have talked about it, planned for it, daydreamed about it but never seemed to have the opportunity to drive Route 66 in a Corvette.
Gerry and I owned a 1959 Corvette (red of course) for over 15 years and we shared many great times with our friends who also owned Corvettes (and some friends who had cool Collector cars— too bad they weren’t as fortunate as those who had the real thing). But alas, the Corvette was eventually replaced with something a little more comfortable.
My best friend, Tom Shepard, and I would often talk about the sights we would see or the places we heard about. It seemed that the “Roadside Diner” was the most common topic of conversation. We knew of many by name and more by reputation. Christmas was an occasion to exchange gifts of books about the Mother Road or Americana Diners. We have this habit of buying  two of each book— one as a gift for the other and one for our own library.
Gerry and I actually put our wheels on Route 66 in the spring of 2005 at Flagstaff Arizona while on our retirement reward— a 13,000 kilometre driving in tour of the U.S.A. (Down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, west through Texas and New Mexico, up through Arizona and the Grand Canyon and then east along I-40 to St. Louis and home). I-40 was built beside and often over the original road bed of Route 66.
This trip and our brief experience of seeing and exploring some of the famous sights of Route 66 did it! I was hooked— I was going to share this with Tom, Corvette or not!
Late May of 2008 was set as the date and in no time at all our departure date arrived and at 4:30 a.m. we were off on our five-day adventure!
Our first culinary experience was three minutes later as we pulled into Tim’s to get our hearts started with our first caffeine fix (accompanied by fresh muffins which Gerry provided). This was repeated several times as we traveled west on 401 towards Detroit. First day breakfast was at a Cracker Barrel Restaurant outside of Detroit. We arrived in Joliet, Illinois (located on Route 66) later that day and took a little tour to see the sights of Historic Joliet. A tour around the complete perimeter of the Chicago Land Speedway Complex which includes the historic Route 66 Speedway and the home of Dale Coyne Racing were highlights before we ran out of daylight.  
Now we headed to the famous Dell Rhea’s Chicken Basket where we ate the traditional fried chicken dinner which lived up to its reputation!
Day Two we were up early and heading south towards our evening’s destination, St. Louis. This took us along a winding two lane road which wandered in a southerly direction but weaved back and forth over I-55 which ran straight as an arrow towards the bridges over the Mississippi at St. Louis.
We wandered through “small town America” as if in a time warp— we were back in the 1940s. Each town and village had a diner or drive-in (the Gemini Giant at the Launching Pad Drive-In in Wilmington). They looked as if they have not changed for over a half century. Breakfast was in Braidwood at the roadside diner located at the four corners (only corners) of town.
I’ll be back for next week’s article to tell you about the rest of our adventure.  In the meantime, have fun and keep cooking!

(Lori, Gerry— and Dave— can be reached at whatscookin@independentfreepress.com)

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