Friday, September 11

We made it. We arrived in Chicago right at rush hour, so we spent a little over an hour and a half getting to Becky's house.

The drive yesterday was a killer - 11 1/2 hours, from Bozeman, Montana, to Mitchell, South Dakota. Instead of our usual map or mapquest directions, we let the gps lead us. It took us a different way than we were used to - over MT 212 instead of I 90 the last 180 miles of Montana. The route took us through the Crow and Cheyenne Indian Reservations. The countryside was really rough and pretty isolated. Although it was a two-lane road, we averaged about 70 mph, simply because there are no towns and no other cars on the road. I think we'll probably go the same way on the way home. I enjoyed the countryside through the rest of Montana and the western half of South Dakota. While there are none of our forests, the hills are so rough that it's pretty intimidating country.

Today we really entered the prairie. Eastern South Dakota still has the rolling hills, but, boy, Minnesota is a booooorrrrrinng state. Southern Minnesota looks exactly like its neighbor, Iowa - very flat, with almost no trees. Corn fields followed by soybean fields followed by more corn fields. I did notice that the cows in Minnesota are mostly brown, whereas the cows (those that I saw, anyway) in Montana were Black Angus.

The biggest difference between yesterday and today are the roads. The roads in Montana were smooth, with no big problems. Cheez, the roads in Wisconsin and eastern Minnesota were horrendous. They have some kind of surface that causes the tires to give off this high-pitched whine. It made me crazy! After hour 6 I was ready to kill someone. Some social worker (I should suggest this to Becky) should do a study to see if the noise causes more aggression in drivers. Certainly I was more aggressive today!!

We've had hot weather the past two days. It was in the upper 80's yesterday and mid-80's today. It's good to be off the road for a couple of days.

Tomorrow we sit around and relax, then Sunday Becky is running the Chicago Half Marathon. We'll go and cheer, then pack up and get ready to take off on Sunday for Buffalo (whoo-hoo)