Well, we went to visit our new friend Becky’s antique store this morning, located near downtown Sandwich. We had met Becky at our hotel the night before. Within a few minutes of seeing her this morning, she blurted out “I have your whole itinerary planned for you today. Go book yourself into the hotel again.” She was half kidding, but she did, in fact, have our day planned for us.
It started first with meeting her sister, Carolyn, who own the antique store right across the street. Aptly named Two Sisters Antiques. We decided to shoot them outside in front of Carolyn’s store. It seemed simple enough, but we were battling two things. First, the traffic, since the best shot was from the middle of the road. And second, the heat. Another day over 100 F and nothing could stop the sweat dripping from our bodies. The heat was killer, but we all plowed thru. Next stop… back to the Bull Moose, this time for lunch.
The part of the Bull Moose facing the main street is an old railway car. Attached to the railcar is a decent sized bar. The railway car was one of the original five cars that Teddy Roosevelt traveled around in when he was seeking his third nomination as President of the United States. During one of his trips he was shot mid speech on the train and somehow managed to continued his speech before heading to the hospital, where the attending nurses claimed he was “as strong as a Bull Moose”, hence the name of the restaurant. The owners Ron and Sue had purchased the restaurant back in 2010 and spent a year restoring it to its now beautiful condition. We had another great lunch of sandwiches and then took some photos of Ron and Sue.
In the meantime, our itinerary captain Becky, had arranged for another local man named Ron to tour us around the town. He picked us up and toured us around Sandwich. We saw it all, including main street, his house, lots of amazing historical buildings and the fair grounds. We also saw the school where he and his high school sweetheart and wife of 58 years went. He even treated us to ice cream… now that’s a tour. And then to top it all off we went to visit the Sandwich Police…
One of the local officers, Rich, was game to have fun so we did a little video and some photos of us being arrested by the Sandwich Police. It was already 4 o’clock and even though Becky had arranged more events, we had to depart. We could have spent our entire trip in Sandwich and been happy. Everyone there was incredible and we are grateful to all the people we met.
One of the locals having lunch at the Bull Moose said “travel down highway 34 and you will get to Iowa eventually”… and so we did.
On our trusty old-school map, we discovered two famous people were born in Illinois: Ronald Reagan and Wyatt Earp. We tweeted out for help to decide where to go and Wyatt Earp won! (The tweet winner Sue Manzuik will get one of these lovely prizes.)
Thus, we continued down highway 34. We passed a drive thru liquor store near Princeton. We thought it would be a great excuse to buy some beer so we did yet another u-turn and headed back. We mounted a video camera right beside our CB on the dash before driving in… unfortunately, we went through the exit door. The owner firmly told us to go around to the other side and come at it from the right direction. We backed up and swung around to the entrance. When we pulled in, he noticed all the gear on the dash and couldn’t help but ask what it was all about. We told him our long story, during which time we had to drive through the liquor store a couple of times to let other customers thru to buy stuff.
Take a look below and you can see GPS tracking of the never ending drive thru. If you’ve been paying attention throughout our journey, you know if you go to
Instamapper
, you can see our location at any time along the trip.
It was getting later and later, and we still hadn’t reached Wyatt Earp’s house! The weather changed, a thunderstorm moved in so we took a few scenic photos along the way, until we hit the town of Galesburg.
Now we sit in our hotel just before midnight to push through our blog. Tomorrow, we go find adventure at Wyatt Earp’s birthplace.
Follow along on Twitter and Facebook and you could win a cool trucking t-shirt. Logo designed by our good friend Marie Hohner.
Oh yeah, and speaking of Marie, she came up with Dale’s new CB handle… Hotshoe. Michele is DangerGirl and Dana is AirHornDanny. What’s yours?
