Another day driving

2018-09-02
MI, IN, IL, WI, MN

Day 2 is the longest planned driving day on the trip. Because I decided that the trip really begins in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, I am making a beeline for it. Google says that it's 25 hours of driving, and we all know to add a few more hours for rest stops, gas, food, etc. As I'm travelling without children this down time is minimized but I still like to get out and walk around regularly. There are a lot of cool things I could have done while heading this way; for example I passed just south of Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore. Here are a couple pictures from there, specifically from the dune hike. It starts by climbing a large dune and then continues two miles to Lake Michigan. I give it a thumbs up in honor of Siskel and Ebert who worked in Chicago which I drove through today as well.

Back to today. I drove for about 12 hours today, including stops. South Bend is where the traffic started picking up. Fun fact: according to surveys, Notre Dame - Boston College is the most unrequited rivalry in college football. BC thinks ND are their worst enemy, while ND is like "Boston who?" Past that the road soon took me to Chicago and then north to Wisconsin and into Minnesota. I skirted St. Paul and continued northwest to stop in Alexandria MN. It's just a little group of motels on the interstate, but it was far enough for one day.

One nice thing I learned is that PA, OH, IN, and IL all take EZPass. Every silver lining has a cloud, and here it's obviously that I had to pay tolls in all these states. I have no idea how much, but it was almost as bad as driving across FL. Some other observations on tolls. PA doesn't put gates on any of the lanes, while OH and IN put it on all lanes. As I was leaving IN one of the two EZPass lanes was completely backed up with the gate down. Was the minivan a scofflaw? Did their EZPass battery die? I can't say, but I do know a lot of traffic was stuck. I think the PA system is better. On a side note, my contact at the PA Turnpike says that they are going to replace EZPass with license tag pictures. That will certainly be better for people without EZPass when google tells them to take that next exit...

In PA, I always see a lot of people paying tolls at the booths. Around Chicago, the main high-speed lanes are all electronic pass while there are a couple lanes way on the edge (practically an exit) that you have to take to use cash. Almost nobody takes those lanes. I really expected to see more out-of-town folks over there, but out of the 200 cars around me maybe four or five might have gone that way. I guess the locals know the score. I went through at least half a dozen of these tolls so stopping to pay cash would've noticeably added to my total time.

I did promise pictures and I will admit that the ones above aren't from this trip. I didn't expect to get any pictures during a long drive but I found an unexpected one later in the day. This is from a lovely little trail at a rest area in Minnesota

A few more things occurred to me as I drove. (The hazards of the longest driving day!) For example, a rest area in Illinois - or at least those around Chicago - are called an "oasis." It's not a terrible name, but it takes whizzing by one or two before you get the naming convention. Also, oases actually span the road. You park on either side depending on your direction of travel and then walk towards the middle over the road. As an engineer I appreciate the efficiency of one building instead of two, but I dislike the complexity of the bridge structure plus the additional thermal difficulties. As a Pennsylvanian, I think their soft pretzels are weak.

I recently traded in my 2008 Nissan Altima Coupe for a Subaru Outback. Well, not exactly traded in; the dealer offered me less than the value of a charitable donation so I saluted him with one figure and listed it on Craigslist, but I digress. The new car has a ton of features that probably came out in 2009 and y'all have been using for 10 years but they're new to me. One of the features is that it beeps. A lot. It beeps when I get in, when I get out, when I stray too close to the center line (which is just called "driving" while dodging potholes in rural PA). It beeps when it has been three hours since I turned on the ignition. Really. It beeps when the cruise control detects a car and when the cruise control has decided the other car has gone away and when the cruise switches from following the car in the right lane to following the car in the left. And like a dog barking at the neighbors, it beeps at the farm house down the road because it is convinced that I'm going to hit it despite my 20 year track record to the contrary. Sometimes I'm afraid that I'm going to ignore the wrong beep, but other times I think of it as learning a new language. Maybe not as useful as Spanish or German.

It does also have some great features for a long road trip. Adaptive cruise control is the new hotness. Sooner or later I have to pass and the person in the left hand lane is going slightly faster but not fast enough for my taste. Now I can just pull in behind them and cruise will smoothly keep my distance until they pull back to the right. One of these days I will forget that cruise is not on and I will crash because I didn't apply the brakes, but until then it's awesome. For people in Florida, replace "right lane" with "any lane" and "left lane" with, well, I don't know. I never quite understood the traffic patterns.

The complimentary button on the steering wheel is for lane assist. This isn't like the Tesla; I can't crawl into the back and make a sandwich, but it does try to keep the lane a bit. I'm not as enamored with this because it just feels weird. Maybe I'll adapt but so far I mostly don't use it. Speaking of Tesla's, they are working on a new Camping Mode that handles climate control for people sleeping in their cars or in attached tents or something. I suppose with the SUV version and campgrounds with chargers that could be a real competitor to Winnebago.

So far it's been harder doing this trip now that I'm older; I don't have the stamina, I ache, etc. But there is one advantage; at this point I can't tell you how much I've spent on gas and tolls because I simply don't have to care. I know that gas prices are the highest they've been all year, and that PA is the most expensive place I've filled up, but those I heard on the radio. Younger Chuck would've been paying a lot more attention.

Driving Distance: 709 miles in 12 hours

Total Miles Driven: 1283