Day 3 - Chicago to Alliance Nebraska

here's my post from Day 3, Friday April 10th -- Lindsey

Woke up a little earlier today and walked to the river to take some photos. Also saw the Chicago Theater (so jealous .. Leonard Cohen and a Doo-Wop group are on the marquee). It’s damn cold in Chicago. And Windy. My ears were sooo cold.

Staff was extremely nice and helpful, but there were people waiting behind us to get out so we felt a little rushed. But it’s only 1 hour to Wilmington where we take a brief break to see the Gemini Giant which is so totally going to be on someone’s lawn. We can re set up the camera and get better situated then I guess.

Here we are on the road again, eating nutrigrain bars and goldfish and singing along with my road trip mix (yesterday was most of matt’s). I’ve only spilled and stepped on a few goldfish crackers, so so far the car is pretty clean inside. Cluttered, but not a complete disaster. Movin Right Along is such an awesome song, from the Muppet Movie. It makes me happy. “California Here We Come”….But first Nebraska and Tonopah, NV.

Realized this morning that while we’re gaining an hour with every stop on the way, it’ll be reversed on the way back, which will be a bit of a pain. We’ll just have to remember to account for that. But it’s awesome for right now since we started off a little late. We’ll probably catch up and be able to be up for 5 or 6 tomorrow. Today we left Chicago around 7:45 or 8 am.

Eww the windshield is splattered with the giant bugs that attack us at night. And during the day. Gonna have to clean that the next time we get gas.

Signing off for now!


--- Later ---


The Mississippi River is much dirtier than the Hudson. Or at least it looked like it was as we crossed it. We’re through Illinois, passing through Ohio currently and the gray/whiteness of the sky is starting to give way to blue skies with scattered clouds. Temperature is 51 degrees right now, though extremely windy when we stopped at a rest stop a moment ago. There are a lot of crazy billboards in the middle of wheat fields, except the wheat is all cut and hasn’t started growing again so it’s like a billboard and the farm and nothing growing. Very strange.

Just saw a billboard for the World’s Largest Truck Stop, may have to stop by. Okay, we have officially been to the World’s Largest Truck Stop in Iowa and … yes it is that large. It was practically a one store mall. Anything you could possibly want from trucker stuff like hood ornaments and those crazy flashy lights they have to postcards, bags of marbles, food, books, movies, cassette tapes, video games to play, a restaurant, a few fast food joints too. HUGE. There were like 8 rooms AND an upstairs Trucker’s Lounge.

I’m hoping we see more billboards like that that we can just stop at instead of having to plan everything out. Granted, that took us a while to explore and time is short today, but whatever. We saw a World’s Largest and that makes me happy.

So far – construction in every single state, a small castle in Ohio, the Gemini Giant in Illinois and the World’s Largest Truck Stop in Iowa. Yay.

Later –


Just finished driving for a little while, letting Matt take over for the rest of the trip to Alliance probably. We’re hopefully not too far off, maybe 3 hours or something. First I have to tell you about the Albino Smoke Monster. Those who watch Lost know what I’m talking about. We were driving on 80 in the middle of Iowa somewhere and to our right we see this road that runs parallel. From this road is a massive kick up of white dust and it’s moving at a crazy fast speed – like 70 or 80 mph – ahead of us and then it just zooms off. We could see absolutely nothing that could be kicking up the dust so we decided that it was an Albino Smoke Monster.

A little later towards the end of Iowa/ beginning of Nebraska we started to see a lot of windmills which was really beautiful and awesome. I was driving so Matt got all the photos of those, but I loved looking at them and seeing their sheer size. Such a cool thing. There’s been some really great driving today. From complete flatness to rolling hills. It’s bizarre seeing a horizon line. Right now the sun is setting and there are very very few trees to block it, which is both beautiful and strange to me.

We’re now on what Nebraskans call NE-2 which to us just looks like a two way road in the middle of nowhere. But the speed limit is 55 so… um it’s kind of a highway?

Okay, gonna cut out for now.

Longest Post So Far. Still on this NE-2 road, going to be on it for a while yet. Running late, as per usual. Tomorrow is going to be interesting.