I left you with the traffic yesterday when we hit Chicago. But, as I said, I got to see the Sears Tower closer than ever and appreciated that. Look at those massive antenna’s on top of this tower! Crazy!
I’ve only messed up, over the years navigating us, a few times and two of those times were coming through Chicago. You really have to be on your toes in this town.
We sat through an hour and a half of parking lot traffic… and finally hit the opening. We get to where 90 and 94 split (or something like that) and Trapper starts asking which way. Well, we’d both said prior – I-90 was the route we wanted to take, but he caught me off guard, second guessed himself, and I blurt out I-94! Ok, as stated, yesterday started horrible and obviously it’s going to end horrible. I-94 turns to a toll road. We have multiple tires and axles and that would probably be costly – so we pull over and think about this.
At this point we have NO clue where we’re going to stop. We are somewhere in the range of 18-20 tons in weight and on some strange roads in IL. (There are a couple of APPS I’ll be downloading soon to help us out in this situation). The last thing I want to do is run up on a 12 ton bridge limit or something like that.
Anyway, we take a Highway that was 4-lane and all was good. We arrived in Antioch, IL at a Wal-Mart that was CLEARLY marked no overnight parking.
I decided to call the store and ask. The lady told me… “Oh no ma’am, absolutely NO overnight parking of any kind is allowed.” Hmmm… I didn’t tell her we were in the parking lot with a half dozen 18-wheelers doing just that. So Trapper spoke to a couple of the drivers and they all said, “Yea, you’ll be fine.”
But, we didn’t want to look like we were camping (which we weren’t) so we kept all the slides in, shades pulled, ate dinner, and went to bed. And here’s what we look like all shut-up… not too bad. We can still get to the kitchen, bath, and bedroom.
This Wal-Mart actually closes (it’s not 24-hour) so about midnight, the parking lot was empty – except for us and the 18-wheelers.
I’m sure their SOP is to tell every random phone call – NO overnighting, but just like in Cookeville, TN (where the parking lot was clearly marked NO overnight parking) I walked in and asked. If I had walked into this store, they would have probably said OK. Nevertheless – we both actually slept very well and were gone early this morning!
Not all was lost on self-imposed detour. We arrived in WI and there is just something about WI farms I’ve always loved. The owners seem to really care about the way their farms look, their barns, and the fields. And of course, my fav… these massive windmill farms! I loved them 11 years ago traveling through and love them still.
We make it to our destination at Arrowhead RV Park in Wisconsin Dells, WI. We’ll explore more when we get settled.