Trip Peek #143
Trip #166
LHA 2022 Conference

Posted on November 17, 2024 by Denny

This picture is from my Lincoln Highway Association 2022 Conference trip. COVID-19 had put in-person conferences on hold for a couple of years and the LHA ended the hold with this conference in Joliet, IL. Between Lincoln Highway and Route 66 events, I was familiar with many of the highway-related points of interest in the area but I had never been inside the Old Joliet Prison which appeared in “The Blues Brothers” movie. The photo at right was taken inside the East Cell House. Besides the prison, tours included the Rialto and Egyptian Theaters, which I had seen before, and a farm, winery, and museum, which were new to me. Of course, there were some interesting presentations and tasty meals in between all that.

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.

Trip Peek #141
Trip #128
Clinching the Dixie

Posted on October 27, 2024 by Denny

This picture is from my 2015 Clinching the Dixie trip. The basis for the trip was a Cincinnati Miata Club drive to Indianapolis but the name comes from what would happen after I reached Indianapolis. I had recently reached the point where the only part of the Dixie Highway I had yet to drive was the stretch between Indianapolis and Chicago, and the Miata outing seemed like the perfect prelude to wrapping it up. Club activities included visits to a couple of museums, a few meals, and one overnight. I spent a second night in the city after meeting friends for dinner. Google Maps says Indianapolis to Chicago is a three-hour trip but driving the Dixie Highway, with a couple of side trips thrown in, was a three-day affair. Cloud Gate (a.k.a., The Bean) is just a little bit beyond the Dixie Highway terminus in Chicago.

Trip Peek #140
Trip #14
Arizona Triangle Fish

Posted on October 20, 2024 by Denny

This picture is from my 2003 Arizona Triangle Fish trip. This was a short personal trip tacked onto the end of a business trip to Phoenix, AZ. When the business trip was scheduled, I asked online for suggestions for the personal part of the trip, and Ken Turmel responded with the idea of an east-west-south drive that he called a “Triangle Adventure Trip”. When I plotted the route, it looked kind of like a fish to me, and thus the name. The picture is of Salt River Canyon on the eastbound US-60 leg. The westbound leg took me to the Wigwam Village in Holbrook on US-66. US-89 took me south through Sedona and Jerome.

Trip Peek #139
Trip #107
Sixty-Six: E2E & F2F

Posted on October 13, 2024 by Denny

This picture is from my 2012 Sixty-Six: E2E & F2F trip. Most of you will probably recognize Route 66 legend Angel Delgadillo standing behind me. This was my third end-to-end drive of Historic Route 66 and that is what the E2E in the title stands for. The F2F stands for “friend to friend”. This being my third full-length drive of the route, there were quite a few people along the way that I considered friends and to whom I could say hello. The Route 66 portion started with a Chicago tour conducted by the late David Clark with a Scott Piotrowski tour of Los Angeles at the other end. One purpose of the trip was to attend the Route 66 Festival in Victorville, CA, and I followed that with a visit with my son in San Diego then headed home through Tombstone, AZ, Roswell, NM, Gene Autry, OK, Hot Springs, AR, and several other interesting places.

This was the most visited trip journal when it first appeared in 2012. It also ranked number one in 2021 and 2023 and stands second in the 2024 rankings at the time of this Trip Peek posting.

Trip Peek #138
Trip #68
Kids & Coast

Posted on August 25, 2024 by Denny

This picture is from my 2008 Kids & Coast trip. I believe this is the only time that a rare fly-and-drive trip included visits with both sons which is at least equally rare. Leg one was a flight to Seattle, WA, where I rented a car then drove to visit my youngest son in nearby Bremerton. That was followed by a drive down the Pacific Coast to San Francisco and a visit with the other son. It all ended with a flight out of SFO. The photo at right is of me, the rental car, and the Chandelier Drive-Thru Tree in Leggett, CA. I selected that as the highlight photo for the journal at trip’s end but found myself questioning that pick as I skimmed the journal in prepping this Peek. There is certainly no shortage of other candidates but picking just one seemed just as daunting today as it must have been sixteen years ago. Driving the Pacific Coast Highway and Columbia River Highway between offspring guided tours of Seattle and San Francisco make this one of the most highlight-packed outings I’ve even experienced.

Trip Peek #137
Trip #132
Road Crew in the Fork

Posted on August 18, 2024 by Denny

This picture is from my 2016 Road Crew in the Fork trip. The title describes a key aspect of the planned trip but does not fit the actual trip at all. The trip was scheduled around a concert by “America’s Route 66 Band”, The Road Crew, in Leiper’s Fork, Tennessee. Shows at the Bluebird and Grand Ole Opry in nearby Nashville added to the trip’s planned musical content. The only one of those three shows I actually attended was the one at the Bluebird.

I had taken my time on the drive down with an overnight in Louisville, KY, and visits to a couple of museums before hitting the Bluebird on my first night in Nashville. It was raining when I headed back to my motel and overnight the biggest snowfall to hit the town in thirteen years began to fall. That night’s show at the Ryman did happen but I and many others were unable to get there with several roads, including parts of I-24 and I-40, closed. The Road Crew show for the following night was canceled. I considered myself quite lucky to be ensconced in something of a poor man’s resort with a rather busy Waffle House connected by steps to a cozy and completely filled Motel 6.

Trip Peek #136 Trip #142 Common Ground on the Hill

Posted on June 30, 2024 by Denny

This picture is from my 2017 Common Ground on the Hill trip. I had wanted to attend the Common Ground on the Hill Roots Music & Arts Festival for several years and this was the year that I finally made it. The photo shows the all-musicians-on-deck finale of the showcase concert that took place on the day I reached the festival in Westminster, MD. This was the ninth day of the trip because once I decided to attend Common Ground, I started adding items from my “someday” list to the agenda. Before I reached the pictured concert, I had been pulled to the top of West Virginia’s Bald Knob by a Shay steam-powered locomotive, toured James Madison’s Montpelier, treated to a tour of Richmond, VA, by a friend, celebrated Independence Day in Williamsburg, VA, got rear-ended at a stop light, and sideswiped in a parking lot. Those last two events led to replacing my Subaru once I got home but, despite taking a beating, the 2011 Forester took care of me on what was a very enjoyable trip.

Trip Peek #135
Trip #169
Miles of Possibility 2022

Posted on June 9, 2024 by Denny

This picture is from my 2022 Route 66 Miles of Possibility trip. The scene is Ron Jones’ customized 1956 Chevrolet parked in front of The Eagle Performing Arts & Conference Center in Pontiac, Illinois, where all conference presentations took place. Obligations at home had me driving non-stop to the conference but that wasn’t really a problem because Pontiac is just about the closest Route 66 gets to my home. There were two days of presentations at the conference along with three evenings of comradery and entertainment and enough free time to work in visits to the many museums in Pontiac.

In the trip’s prelude, I commented about how nice it was to have a conference to go to after all of the shutdowns and delays COVID-19 had caused. I had plans to make up for the express run to the conference with a few days on Sixty-Six but it was not to be. One day after the conference ended, I learned that one of the attendees had tested positive for COVID and I soon had my own positive test results to deal with. My symptoms were nearly non-existent but my drive home was even more expedited than the drive to the conference had been.

Trip Peek #134
Trip #80
Bob’s Last Art Show

Posted on May 5, 2024 by Denny

This picture is from my 2009 Bob’s Last Art Show trip. The name is what Bob Waldmire or someone close to him chose for an event where all sorts of the dying artist’s works were available. The beloved Route 66 icon had opted out of any aggressive treatment for his colon cancer and was calmly approaching the end. Attending was never in doubt and making it a normal road trip, complete with an online journal, seemed natural. At the time, picking the photo of Bob pricing some artwork to represent the trip seemed right but I’ll admit that I’m a little less comfortable with it in this Trip Peek setting. The trip included some time on both Historic Route 66 and the National Road so there were other options but this was the reason the trip even happened. Bob was one of a kind. I wish I’d got to know him better but consider myself fortunate to have known him at all.

Trip Peek #133
Trip #28
On the Lincoln Briefly

Posted on April 28, 2024 by Denny

This picture is from my 2004 On the Lincoln Briefly trip. Basically a drive along the Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor in Pennsylvania, it was my first documented trip on any portion of the Lincoln. I was still employed at the time and this was one of those trips where I tacked vacation days onto a business trip so most of the cost of transportation was covered by the company. The picture is of the coffee pot in Bedford, PA, and I also got my first look at the teapot in Chester, WV, on this trip. In the intervening twenty years, the two pots and several other Lincoln Highway icons have become fairly familiar but it was all brand new to me then. I went a little bit off course to visit the Gettysburg Battlefield and a little farther off course to visit the Flight 93 Memorial at Shanksville. There was not yet anything permanent at the crash site. Just a lot of flags and a few yards of chainlink fence stuffed with mementos. None of my subsequent visits with the engraved stone walls and informative displays have been as moving as that first time with those simple gifts from a mourning public.

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