Dad would pack the car better than an elite gamer playing Tetris, preparing to start our road trip the next day. Well, barely the next. We’d commonly leave at 2 a.m. for a vacation of sightseeing, tourist stops, hotel swimming pools and almost always an amusement park. Mom disliked air travel, and Dad liked getting up early, so we stayed on the ground and made good time while normal humans slept. For a few hours, the interstate felt like our gravel road: seldom traveled.

We were a classic farm family on a road trip vacation, packing our farmer tans, Dad’s sun-deprived legs, emergency tools and a CB radio in the Chevrolet Celebrity (great for traffic reports from truckers). We watched the sunrise, drove through implement dealership parking lots and assessed strangers’ crops from the windshield. My brother and I packed the floorboards with games and the seats with pillows. Mom provided doses of grape Dramamine and, at one time, the luxury of a mini-TV powered by the cigarette lighter.

Route 66 celebrates its 100th anniversary this year with festivities in eight states, including Illinois, home to 300 miles of the Mother Road. The timing feels right to reflect on Illinois’ competitive access to roads, rivers and rails that collectively move people, products and services. Illinois’ system of interstates ranks third in the nation. Our rail, the second largest. Our rivers are unmatched in a state literally shaped by water, awarding Illinois the largest and most important inland river system in the United States.

Widely underappreciated in our everyday thinking, these modes of transportation influence our daily lives, the hidden link that connects us and the world to vehicle fuel, toilet paper, computers, fresh beef and out-of-season strawberries – a sprawling list of needed and wanted goods and services that fill our homes, schools and businesses. Illinois’ transportation network and central position helps agriculture remain the No. 1 industry in Illinois. Roads, rivers and rails give farms access to domestic end users and export markets for crops and livestock, delivering food, feed, fuel and clothing to places most of us never stop to consider.

Hard wired to farm time, my family woke before the hotel breakfast. On a three-generation family trip to Disney, we were the first in line – every park, every day – theoretically earning what felt like our own FastPass advantage. We started the road trip home slightly less anxious and in the daylight but felt mentally recharged when we crossed back into the Land of Lincoln.

About the author: Joanie Stiers farms with her parents and brother in west-central Illinois, where they grow corn, soybeans and hay, raise beef cattle and operate side businesses related to the family operation.