This picture is from my 2017 trip to the Route 66 Miles of Possibility Conference in Joliet, IL. This was the third MOPCon, and my second time attending. At the time, there were still questions about whether a pay-to-attend conference could succeed in a world accustomed to free festivals, but with the tenth annual MOPCon scheduled for October 2025, those questions appear to have been answered. By coincidence, the tenth MOPCon will be right where the third one was: Joliet. My 2017 guess that the idea of a pay-to-attend conference would find no takers outside of Illinois has so far proven correct.

I drove almost no Historic Route 66 getting to and from the conference. I took US-40 through Casey, IL, and checked out some of the World’s Largest things displayed there. Then it was north on US-45 for a meal at the original Burger King in Mattoon, IL. The drive home was mostly on US-35, which I picked up at its northern terminus near Michigan City, IN. In between was the conference with plenty of presentations and a Road Crew concert at the historic Rialto Theater.

Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full-sized photo and the associated trip journal.