4 States and oh the Tolls

We didn't realize it when we got up this morning, but we were all of about 10 miles from the state border. That was nice. This trip has been punctuated by catastrophes and state lines.

I realized about two hours into the drive that the major difference between Minnesota (include North Dakota and Montana in this also) and Wisconsin was the billboards. In Minnesota we passed anti-abortion sign after pro-life sign. It was all about life starting at conception and your parents not aborting you. On the other hand, Wisconsin's signs were more about naughty nights + erotic bakeries. They even had an "adult" store right next to the truck stop. We had definitely gone from Christiantucky to Sexville.

Illinois was interesting. We definitely found civilization. There was a lot more traffic in the last 30 miles in Wisconsin and all through Illinois than we had encountered in the entire other portion of our trip. We also hit toll booths in Illinois.

Now, I was under the impression that a highway would be tolled when you got on or when you got off. Not so the case. We hit a toll booth about every 30 miles. Because we are driving a large vehicle our tolls were also more than twice what cars were paying. We hit one booth that cost us $6.50. All told we spent over 20 bucks just for driving on one road. We didn't even got off I-90. The real kicker here is that as you leave Illinois you have to pass through a toll and then you travel 1 mile over a sky bridge and guess what...as you enter Indiana you get to pay another toll. if you ask me this is the biggest scam ever.

Earlier today we couldn't figure out what day it was. This is apparently what happens when you drive thousands of miles and, this is all you do for multiple days. When we figured out that it was Sunday we were really happy as we knew we were going to have to drive though Chicago today. With it being Sunday we figured we would miss rush hour traffic. We may have missed rush hour, but we didn't miss the traffic. It took us an hour and a half longer than we anticipated to make our journey today. Two hours to travel 30 miles. Chicago is increasing their highway by three lanes and to do this they have cut the 4 lanes they normally have down to 2 lanes. On top of that they have placed cement barricades right next to the white line on the side of the road making the lanes really narrow and there is no curb. This was somewhat stressful for Miles. In fact, there were multiple times when we held our breath while driving though a particularly narrow stretch of road.

We also encountered the worst drivers in the country. Multiple times traffic would come to a complete stop because some driver decided they wanted to get off at an exit they had already passed by a few feet. I actually saw a car going in reverse a few feet and then turning around to make it onto an exit. We almost got into a few accidents as well, none of which would have been Miles' fault. To be perfectly honest Miles did a fantastic job driving today. His effort is shown in that when we got to the hotel tonight he was so tense from focusing that he had to take a hot shower to relax his muscles.

Back to the near misses. One time this old man we weaving in and out of his lane and going 10mph under the speed limit. Miles decided to pass him and he laid on the horn the entire time we were going past and the old guy still went into our lane at one point while we were passing. I was a little worried about this because we might have killed the guy if he had run into us.

The other major near miss was just outside Chicago where the lanes were narrow and we were traveling at about 55mph. Traffic was pretty heavy and a bus cut into our lane missing the front driver's side of our truck by about a foot. The back end of the bus was about 2 feet from us when he got into our lane. This was really frightening as if he (another old man) had hit us he would have tipped the truck at the very least.

I am really thankful to be off the road now. I actually can't wait to be back in unpopulated areas (I can't believe I just typed that) so we can relax a little for the rest of the drive.

We are now in a nice little room with a bathroom the size of NY studio apartment. The wireless Internet is fantastic and we have just eaten enough Chinese food to feed my entire family. Full and tired we are heading to bed.