Ghost Bridge - South of Carlinville

	This is the first little segment next to a cemetery about 3/4 of a mile south of the Carlinville Country Club on Route 4. View is to the south with Route 4 kind of visible to the right. This dead ends.
	The second section is about 1/10 mile south of the first. Again next to the cemetery with Route 4 visible to the right. Also a dead end segment.
	This is a long stretch about 3/10 mile from the last segment. It is also on the east side of Route 4. This heads down into the woods before it dead ends. We believe there was a bridge down at the end at one point although we couldn't find any of the footings. WARNING! Don't explore to the end of this section with little kids in the car. All the road kill gets dumped out here by the county crews to let the coyotes clean up. The kids won't like to see Bambi looking quite so rough.... yuck!
	You access this segment about 3/4 of mile from the last one. Again, on the east side of Route 4. This is the view to the south after the turn. It's blacktop country road until you get to this point, so it's hidden pretty darn good.
	This is the view back north from the photo above. You might be able to see the steel gate across part of the road. On the left is a drive way up to a house. FROM THIS POINT ON - THE ROAD IS ON PRIVATE PROPERTY! ASK PERMISSION BEFORE PROCEEDING! These folks are real nice and let us drive on down.
	Here is from the drive way entrance looking back south.
	This was as far as we wanted to drive. The pavement gets rough and there isn't any place to turn around. We started walking from here.
	And walking...
	This is what used to pass for a guard rail - a big wooden post stuck in the ground with a big steel cable attached to it.
	Still walking...
	Here is the other end of where we think the bridge was. Here Gary and Kent watch the crazy guy go down the embankment to take a picture. We think it may have been a wooden bridge here.
	After we got back, we noticed this big bare strip to the east of Old 66 running roughly parallel to the pavement.
	Here is the bare strip looking south. Kent was standing near the edge of the Old 66 pavement.
	And then we made the big find! Kent {left} is standing next to the Right Of Way marker for Old 66, but about 12 feet farther east, Gary is pointing to ANOTHER older Right Of Way marker! We think an even earlier alignment of Route 4 {maybe 66?} went through here. We really had to thank Gary for showing us all this. He had found all this on another trip. The additional alignment was a new one for him though.

Send comments or corrections to steve@ilrt66.com