We left at 8 pm. We both had worked a full day and were sufficiently tired when we left. *B* drove first, and let me sleep for a good hour and a half. Long story short, with five or six rest stops, we got to the Indiana border at 4 am.
I had thought about this problem, but didn't really take it in. We can't check into our hotel until 2 pm. It's 4 am and we have only 3 more hours to drive. We're big fans of checking states off of our lists, so we decided to check out Michigan on the way. Rather than taking the toll road, we took a little parallel road across the whole of Michigan. (Toll roads, by the way, cost us $40 each way. It's insane what one has to do to cut an hour and a half of driving off the trip.) Route 12 through Michigan was very pretty, though, and there was rather nice architecture on the way. By the time we got out of Michigan, it was about 8 am. We had been driving for 12 hours on very little sleep.
So, we decided, we're very close to Chicago, we should hit Illinois while we're here. We drove forever on our way around Lake Michigan. We learned a few things:
1) Most of the towns on Lake Michigan are dead or dying.
2) There's a nuclear power plant in a national seashore.
3) There are some rather scary areas on Route 12. We drove and drove until we hit Chicago. It was not this Chicago:
It was this Chicago:
It was dirty, scary, and congested. I saw a car fire. I will never go back to Southside Chicago again.
After fleeing the city, it was 11am, and we decided to plead with the woman at the hotel for mercy. Thankfully, they let us check in early. We both passed out. We had driven 15 hours (including stops) across six states - we deserved a bit of a break.
The next day, a good friend of mine got married. *B* officiated, and it was lovely. It was a Renaissance wedding, so everyone was dressed up. The ceremony was held in a field in an orchard, and the reception was in a gorgeous old barn. With the exception of watching my ex slobbering all over the girl he left me for over the course of the 6 hour party, it was a good time.
The next morning, we woke up at 3 am Indiana time to go home. Again, we switched off, but I did not get nearly as much sleep. The one time I slept in the car, I had nightmares that I was falling and couldn't slow down. It might have been that I was traveling at 70 mph. Who knows. We got home at 6 pm our time, so we drove (and stopped) for 13 hours. Much better that time around. Either way, I'm pooped. Today is the first day of school, and I nearly fell asleep the whole way to work. But more on that later.
The best part of driving to Indiana rather than flying: *B* read me The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams while I drove almost the whole way home. He even did voices to some extent. It was awesome!
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