Cozy Dogs and a ranch full of bunnies

Day 3 – Springfield, IL to Stanton, MO (approx. 160 miles)

I’m trying to get caught up on the blog. I wasn’t expecting to have such sporadic internet along the way!

Once again, we didn’t make it as far as I had hoped on Route 66 because of all our stops along the way. It seems a bit ridiculous to think that you can’t make it 160 miles in 9 hours, but trust me, it’s a challenge.

This morning we started with breakfast at the Cozy Dog in Springfield. These are the people that claim to have invented the corn dog. What a cool place! It’s been around for many years and has a lot of memorabilia on the walls. I had traditional breakfast fare, but Joe couldn’t resist and had a cozy dog to go along with his egg sandwich. We bought a few souvenirs (they were out of floaty pens!) and were on our way.

We stopped to see the bunnies at Henry’s Rabbit Ranch outside of Staunton, Illinois. A couple there that have turned their property into a bit of a tourist attraction and have a number of pet bunnies there as well as some old neon signs acquired from defunct businesses on the Route. Of course I had to climb up the big fiberglass rabbit for a picture. (I wonder where someone would get something like that? I wouldn’t mind having some sort of large fiberglass creature in our yard…) Rich, the owner, gave us some pointers on other places we should stop and told us all about his beloved bunny, Montana, that died last year. There was quite the "bunny graveyard" along side of one of his buildings. Oh my.

Lunch was at the Ariston Cafe in Litchfield, Illinois which has been on 66 since the 30s. We had a nice chat with the owner, Nick and he showed me the original logs from when the building was constructed costing just over $4,000! He and Joe talked wine for awhile and then we were once again on our way.

After lots more driving through the backroads and stopping here and there, we bypassed St. Louis on the interstate, but stopped at the edge of town to take a look at the Chain of Rocks bridge which is one of the original bridges on the Route. It was transformed into a biking/walking trail 10 years or so ago, so it is just for pedestrians now. Our quick look turned into us walking the entire 1 mile length and then back again to our car. Who knew we would get more exercise on vacation than we do at home!

It was shortly after St. Louis when we called it a day. It was starting to get dark and the weather was getting nasty so we jumped on the interstate to get to our motel. We were lucky for most of the day because it was overcast but we didn’t run into any rain until we were on the way to our motel and then the skies let loose and there were thunderstorms all night long.

kdl