July 15th - From St. Louis, Missourie to Burlington, Wisconsin

We were up and off early in the morning for our drive north. First we headed across the Mississippi River and then north on Interstate 55 toward Chicago. Ah, Chicago, that’s my home turf. Any city that schedules its massacres to coincide with major holidays like St. Valentine’s Day is my kind of city. Yep, its “that toddling town” for sure. Or is it “that toppling town”?—no, that’s San Francisco, isn’t it? No, wait, San Francisco has Rice A Roni and cable cars, and Chicago has pizza and concrete shoes—I’m sure that’s right. For a while I was awash in found reminiscences, but the reality of Chicago traffic made us decide to skirt Chicago to the west. We used Interstate 39 to drive due north from Bloomington to Wisconsin and then cut across the southern edge of Wisconsin to my sister’s home in Burlington.

At Bloomington we crossed our outward-bound route and basically closed the westward loop of this journey. It had taken us eight weeks to drive a huge triangle in the heart of the USA, and we had seen and experienced many wonderful things along the way. From here on out we were going to visit with relatives and skeedaddle home, so folks interested just in the travel part of this Wanderung can simply skip to the end of this tale. Those made of sterner stuff can keep reading as we keep chugging along and meet the rest of our motley crew, to mix a metaphor.

The landscape we drove thru in Illinois and southern Wisconsin was quite lush and fruitful. Corn fields alternated with soybean fields along much of our route, and the crops looked quite healthy. I can tell healthy from unhealthy corn, but out west I really couldn’t tell the difference between healthy and unhealthy sagebrush, tumbleweed, or whatever—it all seemed the same somehow. I guess we all have a home turf where things seem familiar and comfortable, be it ever so strange to other folks.

In any event, we reached my sister in the mid-afternoon and were welcomed with open arms. We settled in for several days of serious mooching off my sister—a great rest stop unless you like to watch TV. My sister has a really nice TV, but I’ve almost never seen it turned on. The area newspapers are rather raggedy, so we are somewhat isolated from world events while we visit. That’s not necessarily a bad thing unless something important really happens, but that’s the way it is—very calm and good for a quiet night’s sleep