In Joann’s recap of our photography adventures for 2015, she mentioned that we had spent some time in Springfield, Illinois on our spring trip.
After all of the activities were over for the Lincoln Funeral Reenactment, we decided to stay one more night at our motel, and catch some old Route 66 items before we left town. We had been to Springfield once before, but only for a quick overnight stay on our way to the Ozarks in 2008.
Several alignments of Route 66 run through Springfield, and we decided to take a different alignment this time. Many of the items I had marked were on Business Route 55 or 6th St. This was city Route 66.
One of our stops on the southern end of town was the Bel-Aire Motel for its signs. The signs included a former neon MOTEL sign with a large Sputnik ball. The ball also used to light and twinkle at night. This was the first true Sputnik ball that we had found to photograph.
This Sputnik was a low-end model that did not rotate. It was probably made by a company in California. Salesmen would travel Route 66 targeting motels for the signs. The Sputnik sign probably went up at the Bel-Aire Motel in the early 1960’s.
These Sputnik signs used to be common as a way to grab the attention of travelers after the former Soviet Union launched the first satellite, Sputnik 1, into space in 1957.
The Bel-Aire Manor Motel was a 60’s era motel with 80 rooms. In its heyday, it was probably full every night. When we passed by, it was vacant and enclosed within a chain link fence. Just another old motel on its last legs.
We left Springfield on May 4th, and over the weekend of May 16-17, the Sputnik ball was removed by the ACE Sign Co. Luckily, the sign will be restored to its former glory and will be on display at the sign museum in Springfield.
Shortly after we arrived home, I was catching up on my blogs and websites that I follow and found an article that demolition of the Bel-Aire Motel had begun. This is the first we realized that we had made our visit just in the nick of time.
How lucky for us that we decided to spend some extra time that Monday morning in Springfield! It makes us eager to hit the road every chance we get and to capture everything we possibly can. After all, who knows if things will be there the next time we pass by.
Happy Shunpiking!
Ruth
Shunpiking To Heaven Backroads Blog
Showing posts with label motels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label motels. Show all posts
Thursday, January 28, 2016
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Is our Car Still There?
By Ruth A. Ringelstetter
Years ago, when Joann and I traveled, we tried to stay in big name hotels with elevators, luggage carts, and high room prices. We thought the beds would be better, but we were often disappointed.
We would arrive at the hotel around supper time, leave most of our gear in the car overnight, and spend the evening reading or watching TV. Then we would get up early (well, what we used to call early) and be the first people in the breakfast room. Then we’d hop in the car and head out. By this time, the sun was usually up in the sky and the lighting was already a challenge.
As the years passed, Joann purchased several more cameras and lenses, and we knew we had to start hauling all the equipment into the hotel at night. So we would load the equipment onto the luggage cart and then unload it in the room. In the morning, we would do the reverse before they started serving breakfast and then we’d leave after breakfast.
During the past three years, we have evolved to a whole new routine. Now that we leave our motel in the dark well before dawn and we don’t give up photographing until after dark sometimes, we’ve relaxed our standards. We need a bed to fall into, and if the room happens to come with a microwave, all the better since we haven’t eaten most nights before we get to the motel. While Joann unloads and backs up the digital photos from the day and cleans her camera equipment, I make us a quick supper.
And we’ve discovered how easy it is to stay at the mom and pop motels. I’m talking about those one- or two-story motels where you park your car at the door. We try to call ahead and get a room on the first floor where it’s two steps from the back of the car to the room with your luggage. And for us, luggage means lots of camera equipment, laptops, clothes bags, research literature, etc.
With this new thinking, we’ve stayed at some interesting motels. In Kentucky, we found an awesome motel for just $39.95, and that included a free hot breakfast for both of us at Aunt B’s Family Restaurant.
In Arkansas, we were in an area with no cell phone service and no towns of size around. We did manage to use a phone at a ranger station and call two nearby small mom and pop motels. One of them still had one room available for the night so we took it sight unseen. It was turkey-hunting season, and apparently the area was popular with turkey hunters. As you can see by this photo, their mammas raised them right!
Several years ago in Michigan, after capturing the last rays of light over Lake Michigan, we drove another hour and then pulled into town to find a motel. As we drove down the main highway through town, I remember thinking to myself that this was not a good section of town. It was very late and we were very tired, so we stopped at the first motel we saw with outside doors. It was a lesser known chain of motels that we had stayed at before with satisfactory results. And, hey, the sign said they had WiFi, so Joann went in to register for a room. As I sat in the car watching what was going on in the parking lot, I remember thinking to myself that we should have driven farther to find a motel in a different part of town.
The first sign of trouble was that they gave us a room in the corner and there was no way to back the car up to it. After switching rooms and unloading all our gear, we realized that the WiFi we had paid extra for didn’t exist, the outlets were so bad that a plug wouldn’t even stay in them, and the door had a very skimpy lock on it. Yikes! But we decided to brave it and catch a couple hours of sleep, if possible.
In the morning, we had one of our conversations as Joann peeked out through the curtains of the window (I assume to see what the weather looked like, even though it’s a bit hard to tell in the pre-dawn darkness.)
Ruth: “Is our car still there?”
Joann (laughing): “Yes.”
Ruth (also laughing): “Does it have windows?”
So, for us, motel life has gotten easier, but more interesting. By the way, we did recently stay at one of the motels whose sign appears somewhere in this story and it was a good experience. Can you guess which one? And tell us, have you had interesting motel experiences?
Happy Shunpiking!
Ruth
Years ago, when Joann and I traveled, we tried to stay in big name hotels with elevators, luggage carts, and high room prices. We thought the beds would be better, but we were often disappointed.
We would arrive at the hotel around supper time, leave most of our gear in the car overnight, and spend the evening reading or watching TV. Then we would get up early (well, what we used to call early) and be the first people in the breakfast room. Then we’d hop in the car and head out. By this time, the sun was usually up in the sky and the lighting was already a challenge.
As the years passed, Joann purchased several more cameras and lenses, and we knew we had to start hauling all the equipment into the hotel at night. So we would load the equipment onto the luggage cart and then unload it in the room. In the morning, we would do the reverse before they started serving breakfast and then we’d leave after breakfast.
During the past three years, we have evolved to a whole new routine. Now that we leave our motel in the dark well before dawn and we don’t give up photographing until after dark sometimes, we’ve relaxed our standards. We need a bed to fall into, and if the room happens to come with a microwave, all the better since we haven’t eaten most nights before we get to the motel. While Joann unloads and backs up the digital photos from the day and cleans her camera equipment, I make us a quick supper.
And we’ve discovered how easy it is to stay at the mom and pop motels. I’m talking about those one- or two-story motels where you park your car at the door. We try to call ahead and get a room on the first floor where it’s two steps from the back of the car to the room with your luggage. And for us, luggage means lots of camera equipment, laptops, clothes bags, research literature, etc.
With this new thinking, we’ve stayed at some interesting motels. In Kentucky, we found an awesome motel for just $39.95, and that included a free hot breakfast for both of us at Aunt B’s Family Restaurant.
In Arkansas, we were in an area with no cell phone service and no towns of size around. We did manage to use a phone at a ranger station and call two nearby small mom and pop motels. One of them still had one room available for the night so we took it sight unseen. It was turkey-hunting season, and apparently the area was popular with turkey hunters. As you can see by this photo, their mammas raised them right!
Several years ago in Michigan, after capturing the last rays of light over Lake Michigan, we drove another hour and then pulled into town to find a motel. As we drove down the main highway through town, I remember thinking to myself that this was not a good section of town. It was very late and we were very tired, so we stopped at the first motel we saw with outside doors. It was a lesser known chain of motels that we had stayed at before with satisfactory results. And, hey, the sign said they had WiFi, so Joann went in to register for a room. As I sat in the car watching what was going on in the parking lot, I remember thinking to myself that we should have driven farther to find a motel in a different part of town.
The first sign of trouble was that they gave us a room in the corner and there was no way to back the car up to it. After switching rooms and unloading all our gear, we realized that the WiFi we had paid extra for didn’t exist, the outlets were so bad that a plug wouldn’t even stay in them, and the door had a very skimpy lock on it. Yikes! But we decided to brave it and catch a couple hours of sleep, if possible.
In the morning, we had one of our conversations as Joann peeked out through the curtains of the window (I assume to see what the weather looked like, even though it’s a bit hard to tell in the pre-dawn darkness.)
Ruth: “Is our car still there?”
Joann (laughing): “Yes.”
Ruth (also laughing): “Does it have windows?”
So, for us, motel life has gotten easier, but more interesting. By the way, we did recently stay at one of the motels whose sign appears somewhere in this story and it was a good experience. Can you guess which one? And tell us, have you had interesting motel experiences?
Happy Shunpiking!
Ruth
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