Cakeway to the West - Head East!

Eugene Field House

On Saturday my niece Julie joined me on the cake hunt. There are a good number of cakes in Illinois, and a few are located in areas where it is best to have a travel buddy with you. (The same can be said for a few in Missouri as well.) I had ten cakes on the route for the day, but I wasn't sure if Julie would be up for doing all of them. Not everyone is as obsessed as me, and I get that. Because she had a meeting early in the morning, I stopped at the Eugene Field House Museum on the way over to Illinois to pick her up. This is one of the handful of cakes that is located inside, so you have to pay attention to hours. I arrived just after the museum was opening at 10:00. The guide was in the process of telling two women about the cake, and how it hadn't really been painted to their specifications. I could see what he was saying as the cake really had nothing to do with the history of the home or its owner. But I also know that many of the artists had no idea where their cake would be placed; thus some of the cakes make no sense in relationship to their locations. Nevertheless, it is a pretty cake and I was happy to check it off my list.

Julie and I had a hard time locating Malcolm Martin Memorial Park, and I wished that I had brought my car with the GPS. Even Siri failed me - probably wondering what in the heck I was doing in that neighborhood. When we eventually stumbled upon it - oh my! What a lovely park, and the best setting ever for one of the cakes! We definitely want to come back to the park with a picnic lunch so that we can watch the fountain explode, reaching a maximum of 600' - the same height as the Arch. (That only happens at noon, 3:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.)

Malcolm Martin Memorial Park

We picked off all the cakes in East St. Louis before heading out to Cahokia Mounds, and then on to the World's Largest Catsup Bottle in Collinsville.

Cahokia Mounds

World's Largest Catsup Bottle

From there we drove to the Scott Field Heritage Park at Scott Air Force Base. Located outside the gates of the base, thankfully, this small park is home to several Air Force Military planes. I couldn't help but think how much my dad would have enjoyed seeing them. After that it was time for lunch so we went across the street to a strip mall. I like to try new places when I am out caking, so we skipped the two chain restaurants there and went into Chicago Fish-Chicken-Grill. We each got a salad, and they were huge and very tasty. With our stomachs full, we drove on to Carlyle to capture the Clinton County Courthouse cake. That was quite a drive on the back highways! I was at least hoping that I would get to see an historical courthouse, but this one is relatively new.

Clinton Co. Courthouse cake

Clinton County Courthouse

The last two stops were to the Sky View Drive-In and Our Lady of the Snows, both located in Belleville. I have never been to this drive-in before, and it has been a long time since I have been to the shrine. It looks like they have made a lot of changes there, so I definitely need to go back.

Old Cahokia Courthouse

Before I dropped Julie off at home, we made a quick pass by the Old Cahokia Courthouse. While I already had a photo of the cake there, I had neglected to take a picture of the courthouse. Julie had never seen it before, so she was fine with tagging along. All in all, we had a really good time together. She was a great sport and an excellent navigator. And I guess I didn't scare her off, because she said she would like to go out with me again.

There are now 246 cakes installed throughout the greater (emphasis on "greater") St. Louis area. With the 11 cakes I got on Saturday, I have 234 of them photographed. It is time consuming to catalog and edit the photos, getting them ready to put into a book. I also am researching a little about each site so I can add a description to each cake. One thing I can say for sure is that there are a lot of places in the area that I had no idea existed. And that is part of the fun of the hunt.