For the first time in over a week, the day broke for us with a brilliant, clear light shining from the sky. It brought illumination, warmth and, most welcome of all, hope. We saw some other campers out around breakfast time. From their mannerisms I would say they were locals. I say this because their cowered and trembled when they saw the light in the sky. It reminded me of the scene from "2001 A Space Odyssey" where the apes encountered the monolith. We explained to them that we come from a place where that light is seen often... and worshiped... we even nicknamed our state after it. They seemed somewhat calmed by that news and began grooming one another. We knew it was time to leave.
I was a bit disoriented by the sun. After taking advantage of the warmer morning to trim by hair and beard (there is a helpful trick to this process on a cool morning... when the sun rises perpendicular to the Airstream it is possible to stand on the sunny side of the trailer and get warmed both by the direct sun on one side of the body and by the reflected sun off the polished aluminum of the trailer on the other) and have breakfast, we hit the road. My last act was to take a pic out the front of the truck and another with the camera held up and pointing backward as we pulled away. Here they are...
I think it was nice of Wisconsin to leave us those pastoral views as a remembrance. Like the song "Camp Granada" by Alan Sherman in the 1960's (the one that begins "Hello Muddah, hello Faddah; Here I am at Camp Granada")... as soon as it stopped hailing, the kids started sailing and forgot the rain... and so did we... as we sailed out of Wisconsin.
Our route took us southeast toward Chicago. Everyone knows that town as "the windy city" or "the city of big shoulders". (thanks to Walt Whitman for that one). I think we need to update those. Here in the social media age we are not so interested in descriptions as implications. I propose extending those worn out nicknames and calling Chicago "the city of lost hats" or "the city of XXL overcoats". Sorry... to many days locked in the tin can in the rain... it's like a prisoner whose been in "the hole" for too long... does things to the brain.
We did our very best to avoid Chicago proper and we succeeded. We did at one point see the skyline from about 10 miles to the southwest. Other than that it was toll booths. Lots and lots of toll booths. Fortunately, our EZ Pass worked in Illinois (we learned that at the first toll when I held out a $10 and the lady said "your I-Pass registered". Rather than saying "we don't have an I-Pass." I drove on with the commitment to not stop at another manned toll booth between there and the Indiana state line). It turns out that the last laugh was on the folks in Illinois. I just checked my EZ-Pass account. In the trip from the Wisconsin line to the Indiana line I went through seven... count 'em S-E-V-E-N... toll collection points. The smallest toll was $1.35. The largest $7.20. The grand total for the two hours we spent in Illinois was $27.50. As the old joke goes: "If that's what it costs to not go to Chicago you probably can't afford to actually go there".
If the insult of Illinois roadways wasn't enough, next we hit Indiana. Specifically, the Indiana Toll Road which is better known to travelers as I-80/90 since both of these major east/west highways share that pavement through the Hoosier State (I'm not sure if I'll get to the question of what's a Hoosier this time... whenever I see it all I can think is whether it was the inspiration for the phrase "Hoosier Daddy?"... probably not.). Is one of the strangest twists of rolls in recent memory, the State of Indiana sold the road to a private company about 10 years ago. Well, they didn't exactly sell the road itself... they leased the right to collect tolls on the road for a period of 75 years. An interesting approach. The company that leased the road went bankrupt after 8 years of operation (oops!) and what we saw was horrifying and promising all at the same time. The process of getting from Chicago was bizarre. First off, we were on I-80/90 and so was the campground. One might think that the best approach would be to stay on the same road... right? Wrong!... at least wrong in Indiana. Both Google and Waze told us to get off I-80/90 and onto I-94. We complied. After a bit of travel the instruction was to get off I-94 and onto US-20 then to some other road to get back onto I-80/90. Are you following this? Yes? Really? What, are you from Indiana??? Anyhow, getting off I-94 East and onto US-20 East should be easy, right? Well, the process is this: 1.) Exit I-94 onto US-20 West (that's right... head the wrong direction on the target road) 2.) Exit US-20 onto I-94 West (that's right, get back onto the Interstate you just exited but in the opposite direction). 3.) Exit I-94 West for US-20 East. What could be easier than that? How about reopening the frickin' exit that makes that three step process back into a single step? Here's what the Google Maps driving directions map for that maneuver looks like:
With the force of a sharp stick in the eye, Google even shows the now closed exit ramp as a teaser. I've never had a simple 90 degree turn become three complete 360's until today... at least not since I quit drinking.
Anyhow, on to the bankrupt roadway. We hit no fewer than seven stretches of up to four miles each of single lane stretches of the road. Since your time is not their money, out of an excess of caution the Toll Road Company set the speed limit on those stretches as 45 MPH and the Indiana State Police put a car at every one of them. Covered wagons crossed Indiana in less time than we did. Just to cap off the pleasure of time spent on the road, two of the three rest areas we passed were closed. Romeo and I sure wished that wasn't the case. Somewhere near the end of all of that we saw an 18 wheeler on its side in a ditch off the right shoulder of the road (or what would have been the right shoulder if they had not already removed it as an "improvement"). There were two huge wreckers working to upright the rig and it appeared to have happened hours earlier, maybe even overnight. Hopefully the driver was OK. Mrs. C' asked "was that an accident we just passed?". I replied "I don't think so. It looked like another attempted suicide by an Indiana driver".
We rolled past towns you may be familiar with including South Bend (home of Notre Dame) and Elkhart (the RV capital of the world! Literally 80% of the RVs and cargo trailers in America are made in the area around Elkhart, Indiana.) So, finally we landed at Pokagon (which is pronounced locally as po-KAY-gun State Park). The weather was low 70s and dry. I like Camp Granada much better now.
Tomorrow it's on to Ohio, then Wednesday to Buffalo.
Later...
SC'
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