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Lincoln Highway 100th Anniversary Tour

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The Trip Home The trip home was pleasant, but somewhat anti-climactic. We spent three days taking a roundabout route from Kearney, Nebraska to Olathe, Kansas where we spent the first night. From Olathe we followed the Jefferson Highway south where we intersected Route 66 near Riverton, Kansas. We then headed northeast, following Route 66 to Lebanon, Missouri where we spent the second night. The next day we finished our Route 66 - Missouri trip with a "frozen concrete" at Ted Drewe's like we always do. At this point we weren't sure where we were going, we just knew that we have to be back in Brevard by the end of the following day. Sharon plugged our current location and destination into the GPS and instructed it to find us a way home without taking any Interstate highways. The route led us through some very scenic towns in Illinois and Kentucky. By the time we reached Tennessee it was getting late so we spent the night in the second Lebanon in two nights. In the m
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Tour Day 9 -The Parade Into Kearney

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Tour Day 9 -The Parade Into Kearney The final day of our tour was the "victory lap" into Kearney, Nebraska, the midpoint of the Lincoln Highway. Here we would meet our counterparts from the western tour who had started out in San Francisco. We were to drive in a caravan to the local community college, then get positioned in chronological order from oldest to newest vehicle. We received a police escort from there to Highway 30 which would take us to Kearney. Just outside of Kearney we stopped to  prepare for the final parade into town. The purpose of this stop was to get back into sequence if problems arose, and to coordinate timing with the other group so we could arrive simultaneously. This 1913 Stevens Duryea drove 1,200 miles from Mansfield, Ohio to lead our tour group into town. A police and motorcycle escort led us into town where we passed the western group traveling in the opposite direction. There were thousands of people watchin
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Tour Day 8 - Grand island, Nebraska Day 8 saw us cover a lot of ground to get into position for our final "parade lap" into Kearney, Nebraska on the following day. The trip was uneventful and we saw some interesting things. One of my favorites was an old abandoned bridge that was part of the original routing of the Lincoln Highway heading west into Woodbine, Iowa. The concrete bridge remains but the rest of the roadway is long gone. There was an interesting gas station in Woodbine but I particularly liked the old sign. Out in the middle of nowhere is a pair of Lincoln monuments erected by J.E. Moss. A bit further is Gregory Corner. Another one of my favorite spots on this day was a short section of hard-packed dirt road. We had dinner at the Shady Bend restaurant in Grand Island. This used to be the main building for a motor court dating back to the late 1920s. The same family has owned it since the beginning, now on their third and fourth ge
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Tour Day 7 - Rochelle, IL to Ames, IA We had a long day traveling from Rochelle to Ames, mostly because there was so much to see. It started in the morning with this great Cadillac sitting in front of a corn field and a classic barn. We had breakfast at another great cafe, this one in Franklin Grove, Illinois across the street from the Lincoln Highway Association headquarters. I love old drive-ins and this one is a beauty. Our morning stop was at this great windmill sitting on the Mississippi River in Fulton, Illinois. The view from the back of the windmill looking across the Mississippi River toward Clinton, Iowa... Our lunch stop was in the very cool and historic city of Mt. Vernon. This 1916 Buick was displayed in downtown Mt. Vernon when we arrived. It has been in the same family for all of its 97 years! Back in the teens and early 1920s it made several trips to California along the Lincoln Highway, to the summit of Pikes Peak, an
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