Day 229 – Ah, so much better now. We are all well-rested and Luna is not growling & hissing at Java & Pixie all the time. We DO like our routines & any interruption tends to make us a little irritable. Grin………..
187 miles (4:30)
We departed Illini State Park at 10:35 a.m., 58 degrees & sunny. The campground had been a little more crowded & the people somewhat noisy, including their barking dogs, be we slept hard and barely noticed. One thing though – why do people cut branches off perfectly healthy trees and rip apart bushes, all for fire wood, when they can just pay $5 for a huge bundle of perfect wood? Aaaarrrgh.
Okay, so we headed east, then north on I-80 towards Chicago. As always, the traffic increased as did the road work & closed lanes. Chicago and the sprawl surrounding it are huge. (Note to self: since this has happened on other occasions, maybe we should find another route when going west or east by Chicago. Between the road work, the everyday traffic, and the horrible road conditions, it would make sense to avoid this area of I-80 in the future.)
We crossed from Illinois into Indiana and stopped for gas and lunch. Soon we reached the area in E. Elkhart where we’d taken the “before” recordings of road conditions on the App. We repeated these tests for an ”after” picture. It was windy and cool, 55 degrees and cloudy, at 3:05 p.m. when we arrived at Shipshewana North Park Campground, our stop for the night. For the third time on this trip, we were back in peaceful Amish countryside.
Amish buggy, Shipshewana, IN
Amish buggy, Shipshewana, IN
We are finding that it’s helpful to keep this blog for a number of reasons, but right now it’s been great when we are travelling to just look up where we stayed before and our notes on that stay. If we’re tired and ready to stop, we will already know what to expect. Anyway…..we set up & unpacked; we are at site #16, the same site we had last time. The girls are so much better now & are relaxing comfortably. It’s colder here since we’re closer to the Great Lakes than when we were in Iowa & Illinois. It started raining at around 7 p.m. and the sky darkened. Last time we were here, less than two weeks ago, it was snowing. We are back in Eastern Standard Time now, losing an hour when leaving CST. There’s an RV show here in Elkhart this weekend; we have to decide whether to stay for a day for that, or just keep moving towards home since we must be home by May 1. Tomorrow morning I want to go back to the Amish market to see if I can get some more Sweet Corn Salsa. I made Black Bean Chili & this salsa was absolutely delicious in it, giving it a wonderful sweet, spicy taste.
Site 16, Shipshewana North Park and Amish Log Cabin Lodginh, Shipshewana, IN