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3690 miles into the trip and we’re heading back. Google says we have “1884 mi (about 1 day 2 hours)” left, although it recommends a different route than we’ll be taking. The geek side of me (I was going to say inner geek, but my geek waives high and proud for all to see) is curious to know how these mapping sites pick their route. Heading SW through St. Louis to Oklahoma City is easily a better choice than west across I-80. Mileage wise anyway. Scenery wise they all suck in different ways.

We’ve been in Kewanee a few days now, a wonderfully peaceful stop with good friends. How we got here was in the best spirit of road tripping, I think.

We woke up St. Cloud, MN, on Thursday. Had some breakfast then saw Cars again to waste some time before meeting friends for dinner. My buddies condition after his surgery was generally okay, but still not up to having guests crash for the night. So we headed out around 9, unsure of our destination. We thought about stopping for the night, but our attempts to do so were thwarted by full hotels. What now? Drive to Chicago! Through the night! In a thunderstorm!

It started raining when we hit Wisconsin, and didn’t stop for the next 10 hours at least. It finally stopped sometime while we were in the bowels for the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. I’m extremely glad we decided to head there rather than hang around the Twin Cities and see stuff we’d already seen. The museum is spectacular inside and out. I’d like to go there again in 10 years when the kids are older and slow down enough to read some of the information, but it was still a fantastic time. We got there as it opened, and stayed until it closed, and didn’t see everything.

We left the museum and headed for Kewanee, and I crashed for about 16 hours.

Our road trip plans have taken a hit. My oldest friend and next scheduled pit stop had some emergency surgery today, so he’s not up for company. Don’t worry, he’ll be just fine, and the nature of the surgery will give me comedic material for decades to come.

But we’re currently fishing about for things to do and places to stay. It may well work out for the best, since I suspect we’ll skip most of the overtly touristy things we were going to do in the Twin Cities and wander about the countryside, taking in some camping and small town flavor. And sometimes we work better when we’re just wingin’ it, anyway.

There is a big honkin’ indoor water park attached to the casino here. 4 big water slides, including one big enough you can take tubes down it. The whole thing is ringed by a lazy river which is *extremely* relaxing to float around. There’s a very big lagoon entry kiddy pool area.

Highly recommended, the next time you find yourself in the middle of nowhere.

There are 4 kids in the van, all cousins of varying degrees, aged 13, 10, 6, and 4. They’re playing “would you rather”, as in “would you rather fight a bear or jump off a cliff?” and other such deep philisophical conundrums.

I didn’t think Isaac (4 yr old) was really paying attention, but clearly he grasped the true nature of the game. His contribution: “Would you rather be stuck in a cage with a tiger or lick peanut butter off a car?”

Surprisingly our trip odometers only go to 3 digits. Trip B says 443 miles so far, but it’s actually 1443 since we left.

First Taco John’s sighting! Potato Ole’s ahoy!

I love Love’s. It’s my truck stop of choice.