Thursday, August 10, 2006 pt 1 Early Morning
About dawn this morning the sky looked very orange. I dosed a bit and when I woke it was really dark and I could see lightning in the distance. It has since gotten closer and is a full blown storm. I guess we are seeing it from a different perspective, 360 degrees with windows all around, but it seems like the lightning is coming from everywhere. Lightning that was large and
very close scaring the dogs…and us. It’s real close. WOW! It looks very swampy around this part of the Mississippi River. It’s also swampy as you get close to the inlets that we are camped near. It is very green but then it seems that the sky cracks open occasionally and drains out.We think we are going to try and get into Michigan today. We are going to give Chicago a wide berth. Des Moines gave me fits and it’s small. The Iowan transportation department has broken all the freeways around Des Moines so it was pretty tricky. Major road construction everywhere. Well the storm is over and even the rain has stopped. We are going to prepare to get back on the road and maybe we’ll see something fun today.
Thursday, August 10, 2006 pt 2 Early MorningIt rained almost all day today. Sometimes hard and sometimes just a drizzle. We came within a few miles of downtown Chicago…it wouldn’t have been so bad but the Illinois transportation
department has broken all of the roads in and around Chicago. They could really teach the Des Moines people about tearin’ stuff up. We were in stop and go traffic, really it was stop and stop and stop and stop and go traffic and it took us over an hour to go 2 miles to a toll booth to pay to drive on the worst road I have ever seen. Still it was strangely fun. Chicago was really one of the first places that made me realize we are really gone. Soon after Chicago it was into Indiana and we completed our tour of “States that Begin with the Letter I” (Idaho, Iowa, Illinois and Indiana)Tonight we are staying in a KOA campground in South Bend, Indiana.
http://www.koakampgrounds.com/where/in/14153/ As we came in we saw that this is where Notre Dame University is http://www.nd.edu/ It sure is pretty country around here. Green rolling hills. Nice. We
crossed over into Eastern time zone about 8pm Central time so our body clocks are off a bit but this will be our last change for a while as we will be living on Eastern Standard Time. I forgot to mention that Wednesday, or so, it’s hard to keep track we found a huge Outlet Mall. It had a Bible Factory Outlet, Old Navy and just about everything else you could think of. We didn’t get much. Along the way we also stopped at a Gordmans and a Kohls (which Boise is getting!). 
Yesterday was one of the highlights on Paige’s journey as we found a DSW (Discount Shoe Warehouse). If you know Paige, you know she likes shoes. We’ll we’ve had much worse vices. She had only seen DSW online so when we saw the real place it was fun. They were a bit expensive and it is a weird time in the season so no real cool styles but it was fun anyway. There also was a Shoe Carnival and that place was much better. She was glad to see there are both stores in NC. I’m still looking for a Mac Store or a CompUSA. I saw fireflies along the road for the first time. Very cool. We have'nt taken too many pictures lately. More soon. mHere is one of our favorite pictures so far: (You can click any picture to make it bigger.)
Dos Weirdos
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