The Midwest

We got through our longest drive (12 hours) from upstate New York, through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and finally to Julianne's Uncle and Aunt's house in Pleasant Prairie Wisconsin. The nice things is that the rest of the legs are shorter than yesterday's so it won't be so bad. It was quite a change from NY, green hills to the flat, brown grasslands of the Midwest. We attempted to listen to the audiobook Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, but the number of characters and numerous distractions proved to make it difficult to follow. We saw a DC Metro car being transported in NY, probably headed south to where I just came from! We also saw people with what looked like surfboards on top of cars, but we decided that they had to be windsurf boards for the many lakes. Another funny sight was the RV/MV Hall of Fame in IN - I wish we could have taken a picture!
I am happy that we gained an hour with the time change since it allows us to catch up a little on our sleep and other things we had to do (like write this blog!). Entering Chicago was amazing because the skyline agains the post-storm sky was a beautiful sight, especially since it meant we only had an hour left of driving. We were successful in taking pictures with Eastie with the skyline in the background (see the link) - thank goodness for digital cameras!
We discovered that, after raving about my cool sneakers and Julianne's headlamp, we forgot our respective items at Pete's house. We are now joking about ending up with an empty Mini at the end of the trip!
We are off to Minneapolis today and then camping in SD tomorrow. Mount Rushmore here we come!