Then, when I took the dogs out early this morning, they saw a rabbit or something and both rushed off after it, dragging me on the ground. I only had the leashes with one hand so I finally lost my grip, and then had trouble standing up with nothing around to help my poor sore bruised muscles haul me up (getting old has its drawbacks). I was really worried because I'd seen them run over to a campsite where I knew there were people in a tent with a lab-mix dog, and I was afraid my dogs would do something awful. But they didn't, and I managed to catch them, but then they were both hyped up and hard to control and I had to take them back to the RV without a real walk.
I tried twice more before I finally gave up trying to get them very far along the road. Meanwhile my left arm was hurting pretty badly - it was the same arm that got damaged 2 weeks ago when I got pulled into the fire ring, and the same kind of damage so soon really did a number on it.
I found a dog boarding place online that looked like a good facility and was only a few miles from the next campground, so I thought if they'd take the dogs for a few days, that'd be best for everybody. So that was my aim for this leg of the trip.
Route Map
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| my route Wednesday the 4th |
* Illinois Beach State Park - I could see online that the campsite I'd need for the dogs was on a first-come-first-served basis. And I was hoping that, today being Wednesday, it'd be available. And it was. Illinois state parks don't charge extra for out-of-state visitors as Wisconsin does, so that was nice. I paid $25/night for a site with electricity and shade - all I wanted.
Comments on the drive Wednesday the 4th
After driving for a while, with my arm and hip and head so sore from being dragged this morning, I remembered that among the many rabbits I saw at the previous campground, some were quite small. Yesterday, I saw a bunny about half the size of a normal rabbit, so I'm guessing it was born this year. It scurried away from the road where we were walking, but then it stopped at the edge of the bushes and watched us walk by, and I wondered if it was so sure it could hop faster than Dexter could run and thought maybe it was still too young to be out without adult supervision. Very cute though.
Passing a turnoff for Prophetstown and heading to a campground in Zion, I remember there was once a strong Mormon presence in Illinois. I've heard there's a lot of information about it in Nauvoo, which is a town I pass through on the Great River Road, so I'll look forward to learning more about it then.
I passed a business with a sign saying Sapp Bros. Food and Fuel, with a giant coffee pot. I was driving on the interstate and couldn't stop for a photo, and I found several online but all have copyright protection, so look it up if you want to see the sign.
At La Salle I passed a sign to turn for the I & M Canal - aka the Illinois & Michigan Canal. It was opened in 1848 and connected the Chicago River (at Chicago) to the Illinois River (at La Salle), effectively providing access from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, via the Mississippi River. At the time, it made La Salle larger than Chicago.
I keep seeing various makes of campers being transported west and finally realized this road - I-80 - runs into Indiana at Gary and continues across the state, including Elkhart and other RV manufacturing hot spots. After spending the last 2 months in Michigan and Wisconsin, it took some mental re-orientation to realize I'm on a direct path with Indiana and Ohio again.
I saw someone towing a Triumph all painted up as a race car.
In the Chicago area, it's pretty tough to avoid toll roads, and I ended up running past the suburbs of Cicero, Oak Park, and Skokie. That name rang a bell, and then I remembered the US Supreme Court case about the neo-Nazis wanting to march in Skokie that, at the time, had a number of Holocaust survivors living there. The Nazis won on a free speech basis. I'm sure Skokie has lots of more pleasant things to be known for, but that's the one that sticks with me.
Heading north from the Chicago area I ran across NAS Great Lakes, which is the Navy's largest training post and site of the Navy's only Boot Camp.
Lots of road construction, lots of traffic. Online mapping programs said this was a 4 hour drive, so of course it took me 7 hours, including stops. But once we got checked in to the campground, I took us straight down the road to the dog boarding place and made arrangements for the dogs to stay beginning tomorrow until Saturday afternoon. It'll cost me $50 a day for the 2 of them, but that's a lot cheaper than psychiatry.
I went on Thursday the 5th to Chicago, and I'll do a separate post for that.
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