Wednesday, May 11, 2011

May 11 – Through Chicago to Geneseo, Illinois

 


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We had a long drive through bumper to bumper traffic in and around Chicago. I have never seen so many trucks. In 5 lanes of the highway, 3 were solid with transport trucks, with us in the middle. It was kind of tense at times.  There were also lots of road repairs, resulting in a single lane of vehicles flowing in a westerly direction for miles.  It was a slow drive through uninteresting, flat country which was not notable enough to comment on for us.

It was a shock to our systems driving into a heat wave.  We went from a cool night in long jeans to hot and humid day that sent us into shorts and t-shirts.  The outside thermometer said it was 38C.  I left a stick of butter out at lunch and by dinner time it had melted.

Gas prices for the day was $4.20 a gallon compared to $1.46 a litre at home.  There was also a time zone change so we gained an hour heading south westerly.  Distances are in miles so although conceptually in my head it is just a numerical measure of distance, I cannot visualize the difference in distances.

We wanted to continue until we made it to the Geneseo campground just off the interstate so we were on the road longer than we liked (8:30 – 6:30 with a short lunch break at a rest stop).

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This is a large facility with a canal, Hennepin, running along the eastern border where campers  can canoe, if they pleased; no swimming as it is full of algae and crap. 

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The big event of this day was the leak in the bathroom that soaked the paper products in the cupboard and the floor.  One minute all is fine after hooking up the water, then there was a bang and a flood in the cabinet under the sink in the bathroom. Thankfully Stuart was sitting at the computer next to the washroom. He investigated and ran outside to shut off the water. It seems when we asked the dealer to replace the fancy faucet and glass bowl sink with a more practical stainless steel one they didn’t tighten one of the connections very well. It was a quick fix but could have been very bad if we were sitting there when it happened.

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