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(Note: This blog entry represents a combination of writings and pictures already posted about our Cool Change II, Land Yacht Adventures 2021 through Cindy via Facebook and Rick via email. So for some of you, the following posts may be duplicative, but for others, this is the first time you are seeing them. We are repeating them here to centralize the record and share our experiences more broadly.)
CINDY’S POST:
Chicago! Chicago pizza, Chicago Italian sausage, Chicago family … we love it all!
And we couldn’t resist a visit from Cousin Eddy …
RICK’S POST:
After a great reunion with the Conrad’s, we were on our way to Chicago, Illinois to visit with the Murphy’s, Kim & Pete. Kim is Cindy’s youngest sister by nine years. She, along with her husband Pete (my brother in law), are two of my favorite people on the planet. Their son, our nephew Bob, was going to be there as well as their daughter Erin (our niece), her husband Danny and their two girls Arianna and Kiara. It had been well before the pandemic since we had seen any of them.
On the way to Chicago, we traveled along I-90 through Wisconsin, so of course we wanted to make a Wisconsin cheese stop. We were looking for a cheese shop, not really having any particular one in mind, when into our view came a large billboard emblazoned with the magic word.. Cheese! We figured that this must be the place we were destined to find so we took the exit and went into the store.
Inside there was cheese tasting, and all of their cheese products were displayed in a very long cold case at the front facing isle of the store. It was fun tasting a variety of cheeses and we left with several different types and flavors (a favorite of mine was “Bacon smoked Gouda”). They also had a nice selection of fudge so we forced ourselves to pick out a couple of fudge squares as well.
On our travels from Minneapolis to Chicago, we decided to drive one long day of about 350 miles to get to a campground where we could relax for a couple days before continuing on to Chicago. We found a campground near Rockton, Illinois in the Hononegah Forest Preserve. It is one of many forest preserves in the state. When we arrived, we found that it was not at all crowded, so we had our choice of nice spots to camp. The camp host recommended a site where he knew the power worked (in many sites it did not) with good access and privacy.
It was nice to have two full days here to relax and unwind before we drove the rest of the way to Chicago. There were some beautiful trails in this preserve, and we explored a few of them during our stay. We went into the small city of Rockton and did a little exploration. For a small town, it had a surprising number of pubs along its main street. We chose one where we sat outside, had some lunch and did some people watching.
One thing we noticed here that we had also seen in Iowa was that motorcyclists are not required to wear helmets. It takes a little getting used to, seeing helmet-less riders. I get the whole freedom issue, but to me, the thought of riding a motorcycle without a helmet is just insane!
We had been researching where we could pick up an IPass, which is the easiest way to pay the road and bridge tolls encountered in Illinois. As we did not have the ability to order and receive one in the mail, our only choice was to pick one up at the first Oasis we would be passing, just a few miles across the state line into Illinois.
The Oasis is a midwest thing: a rest stop where they have services and restaurants located on an overpass above the freeway, servicing both directions simultaneously. We hoped we could get to the Oasis without having been charged any tolls up to that point. As it turned out, when we got there, we found that they only sold the Ipass on weekdays, while we had arrived on a Sunday!
We then switched to plan B, which was to continue on our way to Kim and Pete’s and pay the tolls by mail when they were received back home. We would buy the Ipass after we arrived at Kim and Pete’s home in Palos Heights, Illinois, and use it for tolls on the rest of the trip.
Of course not only Illinois but throughout the east coast, there are electronic road and bridge tolls everywhere. The Ipass is connected to the multi-state EZpass network, which allowed us to use the IPass for electronic payment of tolls throughout the East Coast and even down into Florida that uses Sunpass.
I was prepared for the fact that driving through Chicago to get to Kim and Pete’s would be challenging. It gave me hope knowing that the worst part of the driving through Chicago would be behind us after we got to Kim & Pete’s. Since we were driving on a Sunday, there was a lot less traffic than would be expected on a weekday. Regardless of traveling on Sunday, it was a very intense experience for the four hours it took us to get from Rockton, Illinois to Palos Heights. We were relieved when we finally arrived at our destination.
At Kim & Pete’s, we parked in their driveway, which was just long enough to accommodate the truck and trailer without having to unhitch. They had a room for us in the house and we were able to plug in for AC power to run the refrigerator and keep the batteries topped off.
Any visit with Kim and Pete is a guaranteed good time! Our nephew Bob was there and soon Erin, her husband Danny and their two girls Kiara and Arianna arrived. Pete knows I love Chicago-style pizza so they ordered some for the first night of our visit. The next night we BBQ’d and the weather was perfect for dining in the back yard on the patio. Later in the evening we sat around a fire pit and caught up with everyone on what has been happening in our lives. Cindy’s step-brother Dale and his wife Bonnie from Indiana joined us, which was an added treat.
Cindy and I had planned on playing a little gag on Kim and Pete while we were there. It involved dressing up like cousin Eddie and his wife Catherine from the movie Christmas Vacation. There is a scene in the movie where cousin Eddy is standing outside with an RV dump hose pouring raw sewage into the storm drain in front of Clark Griswald’s home shortly after arriving unannounced in their motorhome. I as Eddy, I wore a pink bathrobe with black socks and the classic cousin Eddy aviator hat, while Cindy was decked out in a yellow t-shirt dress festooned with a pink flamingo and the words “long summer days.” She had bare feet and wore daisy sunglasses. It was a fun prank and we gave them a good laugh!
While we were there, Kim and Pete drove us over to show me the house in the village of Homewood that Cindy & her sisters grew up in. We also passed by Pete’s childhood home, and the high school they all attended. They all remarked at how much smaller the places looked now compared to what they remembered as kids.
Cindy wanted to do something fun with the girls while we were in town so she took them all out for manicures. While they were away, Danny helped me do a little repair work on the trailer, which was to install some drain gutter extensions.
Our visit was over too soon (at least for us) and we were on our way to our next destination, St. Louis, where we would visit with our niece Laurie, (Bonnie’s daughter), her husband Ted and the youngest of their two sons, Nicholas.