Approaching Storms

Mostly a travel day today.  We left Kansas City on I-35 and left the Interstate to travel west on US-36, crossing the Mississippi River at Hannibal, Missouri.  Hannibal is the boyhood home of Mark Twain.  Since we stopped here on our way home from New Mexico last year, we pressed on.

We stopped in Springfield, Illinois, to check out the Ace Sign Company, which has a Route 66 sign museum in its production facility.  This museum contains or 85 signs from Route 66 and Springfield and boasts the worlds largest bottle cap, a 12-foot tall Neon Pepsi Bottle Cap.  

When we got there, Deb went in to inquire about the museum while I searched for a place to park a big rig in a small parking lot.  When I came in, Deb was talking to a tall guy that was happy to show us around the place.  She told him, “unfortunately, we only have ten minutes.”  She had scheduled a tour of a Frank Lloyd Wright house down the street for 3pm, and it was now after 2:30.  He seemed to take this in stride and showed us their production facility, their break room, and their manufacturing area, which were all ringed with signs.  He seemed to personally know where each one came from and how they came to be here and later on we figured out that he was probably the owner of the business.

We promised we would be back when we had more time and drove down the street to the Dana-Thomas House, one of the largest and most lavish houses that Frank Lloyd Wright designed.  He was essentially given a blank check when commissioned to build this home from a wealthy socialite named Susan Lawrence Dana.  The result is a 12,000 square foot home with 16 different levels in all, including a library, a gathering room with a separate loft for the musicians, a full-length bowling lane, and a built-in vault.  We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside, so the inside pictures were lifted from their web site.  It was an amazing house, and contains the most complete collection of Wright-designed furnishings of any of his homes.  The furniture looked quite uncomfortable, which is probably why most of it didn’t sell when an estate sale was held at the time the house changed hands many years ago.

Leaving here we headed north on I-55.  Two bad accidents in the opposing lane stopped traffic for miles going the other way.  We left the Interstate as soon as we could, heading east on US-24 north of Bloomington.  Checking the weather, we saw the winter storm warnings for West Michigan and drove a bit later than we normally would have, finally stopping for the night in Monticello, Indiana, in a Walmart.  Walmart is usually our last choice for stopping overnight, but in a smaller town, away from the major routes, this one was very quiet.  We were the only RV in the large parking lot.