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American Road Magazine
Celebrating our two-lane highways of yesteryear…And the joys of driving them today!

mobilene

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Everything posted by mobilene

  1. I'm jealous of your visit to the soda fountain! There was one still in an old 5 and dime on the south side of South Bend, IN, when I was a boy there in the late 70s and early 80s. I always got chocolate malts. My brother was so known for ordering double-strength root beers that they'd just make him one when they saw him come in the door, and it'd be sitting on the counter when he got done shopping and was ready to drink it. Thanks for sharing! jim
  2. What a nice story! But I'm sad to inform you that you now have only 11 minutes and 30 seconds of fame left.
  3. I'm cool with doing the trip eastbound from Vandalia!
  4. March 29: Bad April 5: Could probably make it work April 12: Bad April 19: Good April 26: Bad May 3: Good May 10: Bad May 17: Good The Woodridge Motel is an old-timer along US 40 on Terre Haute's east side. Not sure what kind of shape it's in today, though. Otherwise, there are a couple iffy motels on 3rd St. (US 41) south of US 40, and a bunch of the usual chains at I-70 and US 41 on the south side. Most of the dining is on South US 41 near I-70, but it's chain city. The Crossroads Cafe, right downtown at the intersection of old US 40 and old US 41, was really good when I lived there back in the early 90s. From there we could walk a block south and see the marvelous old Indiana Theater, which is on current eastbound US 40.
  5. Welcome! I think you're in for an exciting trip down the Dixie Highway. May it be as exciting as the 66 trip, minus the cops. jim
  6. Oh yes, I absolutely noticed how wide that little bridge/culvert was. Here's where Friendship Drive goes under the fill for US 31. This little speck of road looks for all the world like the kind of road the state used to build and sign as State Road. jim
  7. Whoops! Video is now public. I was willing to go $40 on that 1911 Scarborough, but not to $78 or whatever it went for. That bidder has won a large number of Indiana maps and isn't afraid to spend the bucks on them. There WAS no good place to pull over on the Michigan Road hill. I parked my car when I reached the top and then walked back down to take photos of the one cut with the limestone. Yeah, that was safe. Anyway, the water that runs down the limestone had frozen and it looked really neat. Unfortunately, my blasted camera was acting up and the shot at the best angle was messed up. I think my favorite part of the Madison State Road trip was the Friendship Road (Drive?) segment where it disappeared under the fill of US 31. Was Friendship Rd/Dr ever part of US 31 or old SR1? I'll bet that 1911 Scarborough could have told us.
  8. I drove to Madison yesterday and back. It was a nice trip, and a pretty good day to be on the road. I also had a couple excellent travel companions. I followed Chris Rowland's Madison State Road directions on the way down. That was an excellent drive. I loved the old-alignmentyness of it. There was even a short one-lane segment. I drove the Michigan Road home. It is extremely twisty and hilly in Madison. Here's video. Michigan Road, Madison Here's a postcard image of what this stretch looked like back in the mid 1940s, when this was State Road 29. But north of there it ranges from typical Indiana country road, to minor US highway, to Interstate (as a couple miles of the old road are buried under I-74). I didn't take my usual volume of photos and I don't plan to write this one up -- this trip was for pleasure and to see how the dogs would do on a long car ride. I learned that it's important to bathe the dogs beforehand. I'll make the trip again on a nicer day and give it my usual treatment. But I did find two old 1800s one-lane bridges on the route, both on sections bypassed by US 421, that I had to share. I live about a half mile off the Michigan Road and it was very cool to drive ONE road all the way home from the Ohio River! jim
  9. Despite the rain, it sounds like you guys are having a bunch of fun!
  10. WOW! Those scans are something else! It is exciting to see how the Illinois NR construction is typical of the time, for it's geographic location! The cement base is there. The bricks are there. I do not know whether sand was poured between the bricks and concrete, but there is no evidence of it now. And no "portland cement and sand" was poured between the bricks; they were all loose. I had not considered that freight would have been shipped by rail in the 20s. But still, consider two large vehicles of the day coming toward each other on that road. All passenger side wheels had to be hugging the edge of the road! jim
  11. Chris, I printed your turn-by-turn directions -- you sure you didn't write for the ABBs in a former life? -- and will drive them down to Madison tomorrow. Then I'll turn around and drive the Michigan Road right back home! I'm gonna fold down the back seat and let the dogs ride along. I've never made a road trip with them before so we'll see how it goes. This is mostly a pleasure cruise, so I won't be doing much roadsleuthing and I won't stop for as many photos. jim
  12. What if we do it 2 weeks later? Anybody unable then?
  13. Does anybody have a problem with the weekend of May 3-4?
  14. Wouldn't it be fun to go back and hit that OH Madonna? But you're right, Denny. 60 hours at *my* normal cruise speed is 2.5-3 hours!! I also realized that to make a weekend trip I'll have to find somebody to watch me dogs. Unless I stay in a hotel in Terre Haute that would take my Rottweiler!
  15. If I start saving my quarters now, I can probably make a trip like this in April or May. Scheduling will be key as this will be something I prefer to do on a weekend I don't have my kids. I've never sleuthed for NR alignments east of Indy, but I think the old road is 95% or more buried under US 40. But west of Indy, I've got this whole thing covered all the way Vandalia. Most of the old NR alignments in western Indiana are really short. The ones that are still driveable all involve an old bridge. In Illinois, aside from the abandoned brick/cement road, some of which is more or less driveable, most of the old NR alignments that remain go through various small towns that US 40 bypasses today. So really, 85% of the trip from Richmond to Vandalia is a cruise down US 40. Now, if you want to get hard core, I can take you all into the Illinois woods and show you a 50' wide ribbon where no trees grow, or down a creekbed to show you the stone foundation of a blown-out bridge... jim
  16. Welcome, Rod, to this merry band of two-laners! Jump right on into any discussion! jim
  17. To find out about this, plus an abandoned bridge, 10 miles of abandoned brick highway, and an 1830s stone arch bridge still in use, read my report: The National Road in Indiana and Illinois, Revisited.
  18. Chris, great report! I'm not terribly familiar with the Southside but always figured that Madison Ave. must have been a road to Madison at one time. You chose good places to stop for photos; they help me imagine the route. I wasn't aware that SR 37 ever went this way. I knew it followed Bluff Road out of town. About what timeframe did it follow the Madison/31 corridor? I'm hoping to take a trip to Madison this weekend to drive the Michigan Road back to Indy. Now that you've laid the route of the Madison Road out for me, I may drive that down! jim
  19. Isn't perspective and experience a funny thing? I grew up in the Interstate Era. The last of the major bypassing of roads happened in my stomping grounds before 1980. So the old two-laners have always been "the old way" to me.
  20. I just posted an entry on my blog about my last trip down the Illinois National Road and how an encounter with a fellow who remembers driving the old brick road turned on their ears my nostalgic visions of life on the old road. http://jimgrey.wordpress.com/2008/02/08/bu...stalgia-bubble/ Even if you don't care much about my nostalgia, there's a photo of my car sitting on the brick, with I-70 in the distant background. jim
  21. That was terriffic! I got a kick out of seeing these shiny old cars, which weren't old then. I also enjoyed seeing highways with no side striping. I have only the vaguest memories of that in the Midwest. jim
  22. Perhaps hearing Dinah Shore and some clean-cut friends sing the praises of driving the 1959 Chevy will help ease the pain of indignation.
  23. I've been to California twice in my life (once to San Diego and once to a sheep ranch near Redding) so I'm not fully up on my CA road history. Frankly, Dave, I've learned a lot from you. So I couldn't say for sure about white-on-black signs. I do know that the Great Renumbering in the early 60s made it necessary to strike a bunch of shields from signs as Tracy mentioned, and that it was in this timeframe give or take that the BGSs were introduced. I don't know what color sign CA used before that, or at least didn't until you insisted that one sign was black and Tracy shared that photo of the black sign. It's all fascinating and new to me! Oh heavens, don't tell me you're getting sucked into road sign typography! One thing I do know about CA is that the outline-only shields on the BGSs, like the 101 shield in my screen grab above, were slowly replaced with black-on-white shields. If you see any of the outline shields in a photo or still on the road, it helps you date the photo or sign. These are clues not unlike, for car spotters, the fact that side-marker reflectors appeared on cars in 1968 thanks to federal mandate. The easiest way to tell a '67 Mustang from a '68, or a '67 Camaro from a '68, is by the absence or presence of these markers. I will be very eager to see the Vair/VW footage. When I was in Redding, my family and I drove up to Lassen and looked around. The thing I remember most is the sulfur smell. That was 12 years ago! I'll be interested to see if your footage stirs any memories, even though your footage is earlier than my trip.
  24. Y'all're kidding, right? The 55-57 Chevs were good looking, the 58 was an abomination, and the 59 was just freaky-looking with the gullwing fins. It wasn't until 1962 that Chev reversed their downward styling slide. I can't decide whether the 65-66 or 67-68 Impala coupe represents the pinnacle of Chevy styling! (clears throat) Just one man's opinion. jim
  25. I believe the sign is actually green and uses the standard FHWA Series D font. I think it's green because past research I did into California highways showed Big Green Signs (BGSs) going back through the late 50s. Perhaps the film has faded with time. I think the font is FHWA Series D because of the shape of the lowercase a and the lowercase g. The only photo I found online of early 60s CA highway signage is unfortunately in black and white, but it is in very much the same style as the signs in your film. Scroll down to the second photo on the page below. http://www.gbcnet.com/ushighways/history/1...g_contents.html jim
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