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Dave, What an incredibly exciting find!! And what wonderful sleuthing to confirm it. What was the condition of the road segment you found? Was there any original pavement visible? Any physical signs on the ground? -Jim

Denny, I don't have specific attractions in mind, at least not yet. I bought a tourist's guide to the road and will be marking it up in the days to come. But I want to pick only maybe one or two must-see things for each day and let the day kind of unfold as it will beyond that. Let the boys pick some things each day while we're on the road. I do want to see the museum in Pontiac, though, and will call to see if they're open Easter. Looks like motels west of Tulsa are slim pickens. We'll have to see how that shapes up. -Jim

Denny, Thanks man -- accommodation recommendations was where I was going next. Spring Break is 3/30-4/7 for us. I figure we will go to South Bend Saturday 3/30. But 3/31 is Easter, and I'm not sure whether it makes sense to start our trip on that day because it's a holiday. Would the tourist attractions even be open? I'd like to start on 3/31 because it gives us an extra day on the road, though. What do you think? Fallback plan is to drive to Joliet late afternoon on 3/31 and start our journey from there on Monday 4/1. (Any motel recommendations in Joliet?) I was thinking about driving the Lincoln Highway from South Bend to Joliet! Anyway, starting Monday morning from Joliet would mean that we could get to St. Louis on the first day, but it would make the Munger Moss only about 160 miles away on day 2, which is probably too short of a day. I'd sure like to stay there if I can swing it, though. Maybe Joliet to Carlinville, IL on Monday, then Carlinville to Lebanon MO on Tuesday? Then Wednesday we could get to Tulsa OK, and Thursday could get us to Sayre, OK, the last outpost in OK before TX. Friday morning we'd drive the old road into Texas to say we did it, maybe going as far as Shamrock, and then hop onto the Interstate for the two-day trek back to South Bend. We'd stay there overnight and head back to Indy on Sunday. -Jim

Everybody, Thanks for all the great responses!! Ok, Joliet will be where we start. And maybe I'll back off to 250 miles per day to give us more headroom. And I really like the idea of not stopping in the bigger cities. I'd love to totally wing this trip, staying in hotels when we run out of energy or daylight, whichever comes first. But of course then we could find ourselves in right stinkholes, or unable to get a room. But more importantly, I need to give my ex an itinerary including where we're staying each night. So I'll plan our overnight stops in advance. I especially appreciate the advice around making the most of this with my sons. My 16-year-old won't have his license by the time we go but he does have his permit and I'll let him drive some. I absolutely love the idea of letting my 13-year-old have his first driving experience on a lonely stretch of 66 and I'll definitely make that happen. I'm also grateful for the advice to plan loosely before the trip and then start each day planning the stops together -- and to watch for road weariness. Our last all-road Spring Break trip was what I like to call the Indiana History Tour, six years ago. They got kind of tired out on about day 4, but I had an itinerary, by God, and we kept to it. I think we were all glad to be home when it was over. -Jim

Terrific find Dave! Very exciting! Makes me long for improved weather here so I can go exploring!

It is finally time for me to explore Route 66! My sons and I always take a Spring Break trip on the years where it's my turn to spend that week off with them. They're 16 and 13 and are beginning to build their own lives, which sometimes conflicts with the things I'd like to do as a family, so who knows whether there'll be a Spring Break trip for us in 2015. So I thought we should go for the gusto this year! We're dropping my dog off with family in South Bend the weekend of 3/30-31 and will spend the rest of the next week on the road. I'm not sure yet whether we'll start Sunday the 30th or Monday the 1st; either way, I expect we'll skip trying to drive in Chicago and pick up the road somewhere beyond Chicagoland, maybe Pontiac or something. Because for once, this won't be a trip about completism, about seeing every old alignment -- it'll be about seeing the as much of the country as my sons and I can fit into a week. I want to stay in mom-and-pop motels as much as possible, and want to make sure there's time to stop for all the things to see. I have in the back of my mind doing on the order of 300 miles per day, give or take, depending on where I can arrange accommodations. And I want to be back in South Bend to get the dog on Saturday, April 6, so we have to stop and turn around on Friday, I imagine, and find a speedy Interstate or two or three. Does 300 miles per day sound like it would give us enough, too little, too much time to take things in? -Jim

Love the guestimate, Dave. Maria, a favorite old road-trip diary is Overland by Auto in 1913, about a family that drove from California to Indiana that year. That your forebear and her companions could make their trip just 16 years later on defined roads shows how fast the country's road network grew -- for the 1913 family had to blaze their own trails across portions of the West. A copy of the book is available on eBay at the moment: http://www.ebay.com/itm/OVERLAND-BY-AUTO-IN-1913-Cross-Country-Automobile-Tour-Trip-in-a-1910-Mitchell-/160746376849?pt=US_Nonfiction_Book&hash=item256d3b0e91 -Jim

Maria, rest assured that your project is 100% up this group's alley and that we will eagerly await every word, every development. -Jim

I suppose seat comfort is a matter of what you're used to. I've always owned cars with buckets, but I've driven cars with benches, and the lack of side bolsters on the benches makes me feel a lot more vulnerable because I slide around a lot more readily!

One of these days I'll own a car that I will be sad to part with. But for the most part, I've had just whatever I could afford, or what I needed to haul my family around.

I really hope we can give her material help in at least stitching together the route, helping her figure out some of the inevitable rough spots where alignments have been lost. -Jim

Yup - appears to be fixed. Thanks!

Dave, I goobered the blog link. It's fixed now.

I stumbled upon the blog of a woman who is working on recreating a road trip taken in 1929 by her great-grandmother and two friends, starting in Bridgeport, CT, driving west to Washington State, then north into Canada and then south into Mexico, and then home through the South. They drove over 12,000 miles. She has all the postcards her great grandmother sent from their various stops, and this is allowing her to sort of recreate the route. She plans to drive it herself when she can secure funding. I've contacted her via her blog to mention this place -- we will certainly root her on, and because many of us have good historical resources we might be able to help with planning (though it sounds like she has some resources of her own). She wrote her master's thesis on this trip, and plans to expand it into a book based on her eventual trip. From her blog, Three Months by Car, at http://threemonthsby...wordpress.com/ Dorothy Guyott, Edith Stohl, and Evelyn Stohl started their road trip in Bridgeport, CT. They drove across the country on a northern route, and once they reached Tacoma, they turned north to Vancouver. They turned back down the Pacific coast and headed into Tia Juana. From Mexico, they went back to California and then followed a southern route across the country to Florida then up the Atlantic coast back to Bridgeport. In following the roads traveled by the three young women, or girls as they would have been called in 1929, I am planning to: Analyze the similarities and differences between advice literature from the 1920s and advice literature from today Document how the places visited in 1929 have transformed or been historically preserved Learn about what news-making events were happening in each place as the three visited them See how far $450 will get her along the route (the amount the three took with them in 1929) See how far $6,058 will get her on the trip ($450 in 1929 inflated to today’s price) -Jim

When I log in, I look for new posts since my last visit by clicking the View New Content button. For the past few days, when I click it I get a "Search is not enabled" error rather than a list of new posts. Has this been broken?

Some Sears houses still exist. I remember when I lived in Terre Haute, the local paper did a story on the ones in town that were known.

I based my statement on the Google aerial views, not on actually standing on the concrete!

The park and its 100+-year-old concrete are still there: http://goo.gl/maps/FCF3g

I have to conclude at this point that there's an IF statement like the following somewhere in the board's code: IF (username="DennyG") THEN redirect ELSE continue

Found a photo on Shorpy.com today of a walking path in Louisville ca. 1907. Check it out. http://www.shorpy.com/node/14269?size=_original#caption Notice that this appears to be made of concrete -- and has a center expansion joint. I'm thinking of our conversations on another thread that center expansion joints didn't seem to come to roads until the early 1920s. Just an interesting data point here. -Jim

Actually, that others didn't see it is very intriguing and would help in troubleshooting, should the problem recur. Yes, I do understand how problems that go away on their own cause real anxiety. On the other hand, I've shipped software with such self-disappearing problems. :-)

FWIW, a year or so ago I was having problems accessing this forum that sound similar to what you describe, Denny. I'm on Chrome, btw. The problems went away on their own after a couple weeks.

The Historic Michigan Road Association won approval from INDOT (after protracted back and forth) for a wayfinding sign to erect along the route. Thought you all would like to see it. We're working with the counties along the route to secure funding, with each county funding its own signs. INDOT is telling us where it will put signs on the portions of the road it controls. The portions of the road owned by county, city, and town governments will be worked out case by case. Our ambitious goal is to have the route signed during 2013. www.historicmichiganroad.org -Jim

Someone recently gave me one of the pack film cameras with the rangefinder. I forget which model and am too lazy to go into the other room, dig for it, and look. I'm planning to clean that up over the holiday and use it. I have one pack of the b/w film in the fridge still and will get some color. Boy, has this thread gone way OT.

My other major hobby is collecting vintage cameras. I probably have 75 of them. I focus on 35 mm rangefinders and SLRs, but have been dabbling in 120 this year and also have a smattering of Polaroids. The pack film cameras are THE way to go with Polaroid, because Fujifilm still makes brand new film for them. These are the cameras where you manually pull the photo out of the camera, wait for developing, and peel the photo off backing paper to reveal the print. In my opinion, the pack film cameras take better pictures than most, if not all, of the integral film cameras (the kind where you press the button, the picture shoots out the front, and develops before your eyes). Some posts from my blog about my Polaroids: Pack film: http://blog.jimgrey.net/2012/04/26/polaroid-big-swinger-3000/ Integral film: http://blog.jimgrey.net/2012/09/13/polaroid-onestep-600/ and http://blog.jimgrey.net/2012/04/30/polaroid-one600/ A list of all of the cameras I've collected and shot: http://blog.jimgrey.net/about/cameras/ -Jim