Here we made a rather disturbing discovery. Since the beginning of the trip, one of the valves and been causing trouble. After a day or two of driving it would be very tight and would cause the bus to run terribly. We had been ignoring the problem and simply adjusting it all the time, but when I went to my morning ritual this morning I found that there was no more room to adjust. The problem was now a bit more urgent. In the photos I'm checking the oil though, since the valves are under the bus ;)
From Chicago comes the remnants of Route 66. It is an old interstate going from Chicago area to Southern California. When they built new freeways the route was not used any more and not kept up any more. It is now somewhat of a classic route and it is considered a cool thing to drive on the route. We followed this as best we could most of the way through Illinois, and hoped to continue until we had to head over into Colorado.
There were relics of the routes golden age all along the way.
66 also passed through some of the most hideous suburban hell imaginable.
We stopped at this truck stop and got gas and ice and had a little snack.
Happy days in the bus
We went to Springfield which was where Abraham Lincoln (an important US president that ended slavery) lived for a good part of his life. They had preserved his old neighborhood and house and such but it was too late in the day so we could only see the outside. I waited impatiently (I had started feeling a bit grumpy) while Anu went around and took pictures. Lincoln's house is in the center in the next row.
Another view of Lincoln's house
We had been seeing lots of Aldi supermarkets which is a German company. We went to see if it was the same. It was. We bought some really cheap wine and wandered around the place a bit.
Shortly after the bus rolled over 17777.7 miles. We started at about 13000 miles or so. The odometer had of course long ago rolled over so we don't really know how many miles are on the bus. Considering this is the second engine, its probably 200,000 or so.
Anu of course spotted a covered bridge on the map and plotted a way to go see it. She really likes covered bridges.
