It’s 2 pm. Not exactly the early start I am looking for. My dad used to wake us at 3 or 4 am for our family trips. But he didn’t have to repeatedly walk up and down four flights of stairs, unloading a hobby-business festival setup while at the same time loading camping equipment. Finally. I am off to Maine.
This trip, as usual, will include stops to visit friends in faraway places: two Sigma Chi fraternity brothers, one high school classmate and a colleague from way, way back when I worked at the Washington Post.
But it will also include six days of camping (three in Quechee Gorge State Park, Vermont, and three in Acadia National Park, Maine) as well as numerous stops along the way, including the Flight 93 National Memorial and Gettysburg National Military Park.
Day one is just a drive, to get from point A (Chicago) to point B (as far as I can go – or until I start seeing spaceships, which is a sure sign I need to pull over).
Some notes from the road, which include three thrilling tollways: Illinois Skyway, Ohio East-West Turnpike and the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
- If legendary football coach Knute Rockne were alive, he would be appalled at the utter lack of enthusiasm on display at Knute Rockne Visitor Center near South Bend.
- My old college roommate should have tried harder to stay married to the woman whose family started TireRack.com. That’s is one helluva HQ, also in South Bend.
- The area around Elkhart, Indiana, really IS the RV capital (e.g. Heartland, etc.) of the universe. There is even an RV Hall of Fame there. And apparently you can add pontoons to that title as well (e.g. Misty Harbor Boats, which makes the Viaggio).
- Comedian Bill Engvall is coming to Shipshewana, Indiana! See him at the Michiana Events Center.
- So THAT’S where Ohio summer party capital Put-in-Bay is, at Port Clinton near Sandusky, Ohio. I always wondered where the hell that was.
- When the mechanic who fixed the speed sensor in my front left wheel couldn’t get the center cap to stick, why did I think I could do it any better? Lost and lonely on the Ohio Turnpike: One 20-year-old Audi center cap. My first casualty.
There’s heavy rain around Oberlin, Ohio, and an annoying abundance of single lane construction. Night is falling and I sense that I am about to start seeing spaceships. I pull out the raw carrots and start to chew. This is a trick I learned on the endless drives across Kansas and Oklahoma on trips to Arizona. It never fails to wake me up.
It’s almost midnight. Point B ends up to be 472 miles from Chicago: Monroeville, PA. This happens to be four miles from Wilmerding, where my dad grew up. So I’ll make a quick stop there in the morning before moving on to the Flight 93 Memorial and Gettysburg.
