     |
Wednesday morning 7:00AM, started up again and drove through Minnesota, Wisconsin, Missouri (crossed over the Mississippi river [finally made use of the spelling rhyme] ), Illinois, and half way through Indiana. I stopped at 11:10 PM at another truck/rest stop at Elkhart, Indiana and slept again.
Thursday morning 6:45AM, woke up and on the way again. Crossed the remainder of Indiana, through Ohio and finally into Pennsylvania where I arrived at the apartment complex at 11:00 AM.
I took 1 1/2 hours in break time from driving on Tuesday(15 1/2 hours driving), 15 minutes break time on Wednesday (16 hours driving), and Thursday (almost 4 hours driving) which gave a grand total of 35 hours driving time. I counted the gas stops as driving time as they were fairly short. The total mileage was 3,567 kilometers or 2,216 miles. My cost for gas (after the dollar converting) was $177.64 Canadian. Better than I expected.
Going through Chicago at night time was a little fun (if you want to call it that). All I was using for directions for the trip were some directions that I got off of the Internet. In Chicago there were so many on-ramps and off-ramps with 5 to 6 lanes in each direction with every car going about 75MPH in a double nickle (55) speed limit. Trying to read my directions by the street lights, looking for the off-ramp signs, and going at this speed was a little crazy. But I lived.
Also in Chicago I saw something new, as I was driving/coping with all the above items, I started to come up over a rise and saw a McDonalds resturant right in the middle of the Interstate Highway. As I topped the rise, I saw that the McDonalds was located on a overpass over the highway. This overpass does not have any way for vehicles to get across the highway, it was strictly for the resturant complex. Vehicles from either side can stop on their respective sides to visit. I just had to stop and take a look. Inside these complexes were a few different resturants such as Blaskin and Robbins Ice Cream, and some other ones that I have not heard of before, along with McDonalds. The McDonalds was the largest of them all. Further down the road I saw 2 more of these overpasses, one Wendys and the other BurgerKing. I still can't get over my first thoughts of when I seen it in the middle of the road.
One other new thing that I experienced in Chicago was the toll booths. You are driving on a three lane highway when it spreads into about 15 lanes for the toll booths. You pull up and can either go to an attended booth where you pay the $0.40 toll with a bill or you can go through the automated side. I had some US change so this is the one I used. It is kinda like a pit stop in Indy Car racing, at least that is what I thought. You brake hard for the toll booth, throw your $0.40 into a big funnel, the toll gate opens and off you roar trying for position as these 15 lanes now converge back into the three with no set merge lines painted on the highway. Kind of like a free for all. My kind of driving. I thought this was interesting and was looking forward to the next toll booth a few miles down the road so that I could do this again. Loads of fun. The only problem was that this was again, and again, and again. After going through a few of these tollbooths I was down to $0.10 US change left. I had to turn off of this highway onto another and came to another toll booth just after I turned off. This toll booth had only the automated booths and required $0.15. After some quick scrambling I found a Canadian nickle which I added to the US ones and got through. As I was thinking about it afterwards, wondering what would happen if you did not have any change, I got to thinking and seem to remember that this one's toll gate was in the up position, otherwise there could be quite a traffic backup. Boy, is Chicago a happening place, the most action for one hour or so out of the 35 total. These tolls just kept happening from there on, although there was no more which were so close together and for such a low amount. It worked out to be about $5.00 per state totalling about $20 to $25 US. I guess this is comparable to the Coquahalla(spelling??) highway in BC. I did not keep track of the running total at the start of the tolls so I am not sure as to the complete amount.
All told, the trip was quite an experience and was very interesting so see the many different views of the country side. I think that Wisconsin was the most interesting and attractive. They have rolling hills and lots of trees. Their licence plate sums it up "Land of a Thousand Lakes" (something like that). Saskatchewan takes the honours for the most boring.
One last note on what I thought was interesting. I could not believe the amount of semi trucks that ply their trade down there. On our many trips between Calgary and Vancouver, I had always thought that that was a lot of trucks, but once in the States I would say that there is 5-10 times the amount of trucks. The truck/rest stops that I used to sleep in are HUGE!! They are located at gas stations/resturants and driving by in the daytime would leave you wondering why on earth would they have such a massive parking lot. Come nighttime these lots are just packed. Wednesday night I found no empty spots at my first attempt and had to continue on to the next one.
If you want to bookmark this site so that you can view it later as I add/change more pictures, just click on the "Favorites" icon and then click on the "Add" icon.
Bye for now.