We leave Chicago passing through the intersection of Adams St and Michigan Ave from where the Route officially starts and we head towards Springfield (IL), the city where Abraham Lincoln began his political adventure that led him to the office of President of the United States where he promulgated the XIII ° amendment that banned slavery from the whole territory of the newly unified States after the long and bloody war of secession. We visit the museum dedicated to him and his tomb where his bust has a very shiny nose due to the American custom of touching it.
Then we take the road towards St Louis, city of the freedom arch from which the settlers of the far west left for the new lands to be conquered. We discover that access to the Mississippi river is forbidden because is expected an increase in its flow, so we take a walk to the city center with its Capitol Hill and its famous arch that we do not visit because we had done it on a previous visit. We pass by the other Springfield (that of Massachussetts) before heading to Joplin and Oklahoma City, looking for and visiting pieces of abandoned road, villages suspended in time, relics and memorabilia, surviving bridges, gas stations frozen in the sixties, gigantic drive inns with hundreds of parking spaces, state signs and indicating that this is the true and only historic route 66, tributes to the protagonists of the Disney film “Cars”. We meet swarms of motorcyclists who stubbornly replicate the “easy riders” of the movie, even if they are no longer old and Harleys struggle to transport them …

We decide to stop for a couple of days in Amarillo passing by some of the must see of the old path of the Route such as the “Tower station U drop Inn Cafe” or the “Cross of Lord Jesus” (an area that contains a gigantic white cross and the 12 stations of the cross with life-size bronze statues). A delicious steak at the famous restaurant on the outskirts of town “The Big Texan steak Ranch and Brewery”.

We leave again stopping at the Cadillac Ranch an art installation that sees some Cadillacs planted in the ground and left available to all those who want to leave their message with acrylic paint and this has made them unrecognizable and swollen with paint.

Continuing west we arrive at the village of Adrian in Texas where there is the “Mid Point cafe”, a must for everyone to take a selfie in front of the sign indicating that we are halfway.