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Re: Monte on MG 2003

To: mgs@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: Monte on MG 2003
From: KGROWLER@aol.com
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2003 09:41:58 EDT
Rocky Frisco wrote:

<<<Does anybody else like to take the back roads and scenic routes?>>>

Absolutely! We had a ball going from Chicago to St. Louis to MG 2003. We went 
down in a 3 MG (two Midgets and an MGB) caravan down old Route 66. Covering 
the length of Illinois on two-laners is a world apart from the mind-numbing 
drive droning down Interstate 55. We stopped for things like maple sirup (their 
preferred spelling) at Funk's Grove and lunch at the Dixie Truckers Home. We 
admired restored Rt 66-era service stations as well as abandoned and decaying 
ones and appropriate (for us) architectural oddities like the octagonal library 
building in Atlanta, IL. A pleasant hour was spent in Broadwell at the old Pig 
Hip Restaurant (1937-1991), now a museum opened the week before dedicated to 
the Pig Hip's Route 66 era. Our host was Ernie Edwards, the Pig Hip's founder 
and owner, who had a hundred stories to tell. A great time with a gentleman 
who is still proud to have been designated "an old coot" by Mike Royko in an 
early 80's Royko column.

We returned with one more MGB added. We headed northwest on two-laners along 
the Missouri side of the Mississippi up to Hannibal. After crossing the 
Mississippi, we took various backroads working our way home. It turned a 5 hour 
Interstate trip into a 12 hour drive, but it was time well spent. As Roger 
Goebbert, driver of one of the MGBs and a recent retiree kept saying over the 
course 
of the day, " I got time". It's one of those things in life that I feel that 
if I don't have time for, I just need to make time for.

I have to agree with Rocky's premise of feeling unthreatened in these cars on 
the backroads and in close contact with the local populace. I feel more 
threatened on the Interstates by SUVs used as battering rams by drivers who 
feel 
invincible.

I am looking forward to the trip to New Jersey next year in the same mode. 
Indiana by Toll Road is simply not the way to go. I love taking US 6 across 
Indiana and Ohio and have used it often over the last 20 years to go visit my p
arents near Cleveland. The mountains of Pennsylvania make for more enjoyable 
driving regardless of route, but I am looking for two-laners to replace the 
Pennsylvania Turnpike and Interstate 80 routes we often used for family 
vacations in 
the 60's and 70's. I have always liked the PA Turnpike, but I have been 
warned that the truck traffic is massive these days on that route. The 
Parsippany/Morristown is familiar to me from visits I used to make to the home 
of a 
college roommate's family in Whippany. And I had an Aunt and Uncle nearby in 
the 
Poconos in Stroudsburg, PA. It's going to be a great convention in a nice area.

Kim Tonry
Downers Grove, IL, USA

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