Stage 01 · Thu · Aug 6
The Send-Off
Chicago / Willowbrook, IL → St. Louis, MO
Route 66 was born in Chicago in 1926, and so is this rally. From Willowbrook — home of Dell Rhea's Chicken Basket, feeding travelers since the road was young — the field points southwest across the Illinois prairie. This is the road's oldest country: Joliet's limestone downtown, the twin arcs of grain country, Pontiac with its murals and its shrine of a museum, the leaning water towers and restored Standard Oil stations that small towns kept alive out of pure stubbornness. By Springfield the road belongs to Lincoln; by the Chain of Rocks it belongs to the Mississippi. Three hundred miles in, the Gateway Arch rises off the floodplain like a chrome sunrise — the official end of the beginning.
The stage map
5 waypoints on this leg — tap an icon on the map for the story. Peak 850 ft.
What to watch for
- Roadside tableDell Rhea's Chicken Basket, Willowbrook — a 66 roadhouse feeding travelers since 1946
- Roadside oddityGemini Giant, Wilmington — 30 feet of fiberglass spaceman guarding the road since 1965
- Route 66 lorePontiac's Route 66 murals and the Old Log Cabin, where the road's story is painted on brick
- LandmarkChain of Rocks Bridge — the crooked old crossing of the Mississippi
- The viewThe Illinois prairie at golden hour — corn to the horizon, the road dead straight