Ambler’s Texaco Gas Station on Historic Route 66, Dwight, Illinois
We got our first look at an official part of Route 66 today – this was on the “winds from Chicago” part. We’ve got plans to do a lot more of Route 66, but not this trip!
Rosebay Rhododendron in Cook Forest State Park in Pennsylvania
We visited PA last week before heading to Wisconsin. I found this photo postcard today and decided to go ahead and post it even though it will be out of order. 😉
We arrived in Lake Geneva on Wednesday, apparently dragging the hot weather with us from Ohio. Big thunderstorms last night cooled things off to the low 80s with less humidity today. It feels more like what I had expected up this way.
Boat cruise on Lake Geneva tomorrow, photos to follow!
This is a little town we passed through on our way to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. We stopped for lunch at a place called ‘Eddie Gaedel Pub and Grill. Who was Eddie Gaedel? Glad you asked!
Eddie Gaedel was the smallest player to appear in a Major League Baseball game.
Gaedel gained recognition in the second game of a St. Louis Browns doubleheader on August 19, 1951. Weighing 65 pounds (29 kg) and standing 3 feet 7 inches (109 cm) tall, he became the shortest player in the history of the Major Leagues. Gaedel made a single plate appearance and was walked with four consecutive balls before being replaced by a pinch-runner at first base. His jersey, bearing the uniform number “1⁄8”, is displayed in the St. Louis Cardinals Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.
St. Louis Browns owner Bill Veeck, in his 1962 autobiography Veeck – As in Wreck, said of Gaedel, “He was, by golly, the best darn midget who ever played big-league ball. He was also the only one.”
The Emlenton Bridge over the Allegheny River near Emlenton, PA
The Emlenton Bridge is a steel-deck truss bridge that spans the Allegheny River just south of the town of Emlenton, Pennsylvania, United States at approximately mile marker 44.4 on I-80. With a height of 270 feet (82 m) above the river, the Emlenton Bridge was the highest bridge in the Interstate Highway System when completed in 1968 (The Lewiston-Queenston Bridge is higher but is technically an international bridge, not part of the Interstate Highway system). This record was held until 1971 with the opening of the Fred G. Redmon Bridge near Selah, Washington.
The Emlenton Bridge remains the highest road bridge in Pennsylvania; with an overall span of 1,668 feet (508 m) it was the largest bridge constructed as part of the Keystone Shortway project. With the completion of the Interstate System, it is likely that the Emlenton Bridge will remain the fifth-highest bridge in the system for a significant time, behind the Glade Creek Bridge in West Virginia, the Pine Valley Creek Bridge in California, the Galena Creek Bridge in Nevada, and the aforementioned Redmon Bridge.
An interesting fact about the Emlenton Bridge is that due to its size, and geography of the land, it is actually located in three different Pennsylvania counties. One side of the bridge is in Venango County, the other in Clarion County, but the southwest abutment resides in Butler County.
