The annual Illinois Route 66 Red Carpet Corridor Festival from Joliet to Towanda was held over the weekend.
While surfing around, I found this pair of videos, one 27 minutes and the other 35 minutes, from the Alban family, which took the entire festival route. It’s a good overview of the festival.
And the pin giveaways at each town’s designated stop is a great idea. It gets children and Route 66 aficionados involved.
Here’s the first video:
Here’s the second part. In it, Illinois Route 66 preservationist John Weiss makes an appearance. The family also enjoys a rare opening of Memory Lane — an early alignment of Route 66 — in Lexington.
(Screen-capture image of one of the pins given away at the festival)
It was kind of ridiculous that all of the towns seemed to run out of pins early Saturday afternoon when the Drive was scheduled through Sunday. I know that it’s just a pin, but the “scavenger hunt” part of the Red Carpet Corridor is FUN. We were only able to obtain 4 buttons from ALL of the towns we visited!