Happy New Year! Spent part of the holidays going through a few thousand photos covering Illinois Interstates to fill in some page gaps for I-57 and I-80, plus finally make a page for Interstate 180. Interstate 57 north at the Tri State Tollway (I-294) at Markham, Illinois. The first of six ramps at the exchange opened in 2014. 06/20/15 Prior to 2014, Interstate 57 and the [...]
Website updates starting late last week and continuing to December 12 have focused on our long backlog of photos throughout the state of Iowa. The bulk of the site content focused on eastern Iowa, with several daytrips originating from the Quad Cities. Decided to expand westward starting with Interstate 80, which now has 2013-16 photo coverage from West Des Moines eastward and westward to the South Mixmaster Interchange where [...]
Work continues to progress on the new I-74 Mississippi River Bridge linking Bettendorf, Iowa with Moline, Illinois. Construction on the $1.2 billion span got underway in July 2017 and continues through 2021. Crews are working on both sides of the river, building the future bridge approach viaducts, and erecting pier supports for the eventual six-lane bridge. The first of the two replacement bridges will open by early 2020. With the [...]
Enjoyed a break in the cloudy weather on our resent visit to Iowa to tag along with Bill and his son Joey on 300 mile day trip exploring various U.S., state and county routes across southeastern Iowa. Here are a few noteworthy things and photos from the drive on March 25. Six years after the realignment of U.S. 61 to bypass Davenport, signs along U.S. 6 still reflect the [...]
This week we finished adding photos taken last month in Upstate South Carolina and moved on from there to additional material sent in from Peter in the Green Bay area. Carter shot some of U.S. 123 between Easley and Greenville, so we coupled those photos with previous photos he took in April 2014 and from a drive Brent and I did back in December 2008 to three new pages. U.S. [...]
The last day of our eight day trek through the Upper Midwest took us from the Quad Cities area back to Chicago before heading southward to home. Leaving around lunchtime, we traveled I-74 through Bettendorf and Moline, catching a glimpse of the current utility work being performed in preparation of the I-74 rebuild across the Mississippi River. We then hooked up with I-80 east toward Lasalle and Joliet. [...]
The first of a 4,700 mile eight-day tour of the Upper Midwest and Great Plains kicked off from Chicago, taking us north to Milwaukee and west to Madison, Wisconsin Dells, Eau Claire and St. Paul, Minnesota. Interstate 94 west splits with U.S. 41 to join the Edens Spur of the TriState Tollway. Interstate 41 was approved by AASHTO on November 15, 2012. The newest Interstate in Wisconsin [...]
Began the morning of day 2 just outside Cincinnati on a cloudy morning with the last remnants of cold front moving out. Decided to poke around downtown Cincinnati for an hour or so before heading westward along Interstate 74 to Champaign, Illinois. The trip would turn us north along Interstate 57 and east to Michigan later this day, and how far into Michigan we would make it depended upon how [...]
The Amstutz Expressway (known as "the Amstutz" and "the road to nowhere") is a portion of Illinois State Route 137 north of Chicago that runs along the Lake Michigan shoreline. Originally intended to be a relief route for I-94 and run from Chicago north into Wisconsin, the road was never completed and today only small two portions exist: a short stretch in North Chicago and another through Waukegan. The North [...]
Brent drove from Chicago west to QC and met up for a joint trip southeast to Champaign. A quick cold front blew through the morning of, washing out most of the ride west. This view shows that construction along Interstate 88 (East-West Tollway) is finally complete! If you drove through in 2008, you noted jersey barriers everywhere and your eyes bled orange. The Illinois Tollway is slowly [...]
