Grab the RV and travel the Mother Road.
By the shores of Lake Michigan at 5.07am, I stand before ‘The Bean’ until the crack-of-dawn sun projects me onto Chicago’s skyscrapers. Cloud Gate, Sir Anish Kapoor’s 100-tonne stainless-steel sculpture theatrically mirrors the city, until I walk beneath its concave belly, where warped reflections turn the artwork abstract.
Chicago is the starting point for Route 66, an epic 3,940-kilometre road trip spanning eight states from Illinois in the Midwest, to California (Santa Monica) on the Pacific Coast. While the hallowed highway is a showreel of fast food and supersized statues, it also hides a trove of historical finds and cultural curios. In the lead-up to November 2026, when The Mother Road (so described in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath) celebrates its centenary, I slowed to cruising speed to find some of its lesser-known treasures.
Illinois
From modern art to ancient artefacts, Illinois is a state of many faces. Cahokia Mounds World Heritage and State Historic Site in Collinsville preserves the vestiges of an ancient Mississippian civilisation. The pre-Columbian Native American settlement was home to an agricultural chiefdom society. Wandering the archaeological site’s wetland-surrounded earthen mounds, I pause by a 30-metre-tall grassy knoll. Named Monks Mound, the site hides ancient, terraced gardens that were once tended by Trappist monks.
