4/11-4/13

4/11 – 4/13

I tried to add photos to the blog post Saturday, but the hotel wi-fi wasn’t thrilled. I’ll try again with this post, we’re home now and have our own good connection.

Saturday 4/12, day 14, we spend the day enjoying the sunshine in Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois. We stayed on rte 80 almost the whole way, only just west of Chicago we changed to rte 55 northeast and local route 83 north. This got us to Mt. Prospect, northwest of the city, where we spent the night. It was a day of rivers – first the Platte, a wide and shallow river that waters arid Nebraska, and as we drove east it brought more and more trees into the landscape. Over the Missouri and into Iowa it was yet a  little less dry, and once we crossed the Mississippi into Illinois we were seeing what we think of as “normal” amounts of trees, streams, basins and farm ponds. Quite a difference with Los Angeles!

We were not long on the road, going east from Kearney, NE, when I noticed a flock of, were those geese? Overhead, flying in V-formation to the north. Larger wings, bodies more slender, graceful, light grey looking, but their necks stretched out, so not herons either? The bird book suggested sandhill cranes, and it IS migration time… Over the next few miles we saw enough others in the brown corn fields and in the air to be sure that’s what we had. It made our day. Sunday started equally well, soon after leaving the hotel in Chicago, with two sightings of wild mute swans.

Food is always a bit of a challenge when we’re driving long stretches in the car. In the RV we can make our own meals; we can decide to stop somewhere for food, but we don’t have to. In the car we of course have to rely on what’s available along the highway… So there have been McDonalds salads and burgers and there’s been instant hotel breakfast buffet. Eeh. Saturday night though, a quarter mile walk from the hotel, we enjoyed barbecue in a little local diner, and Sunday, at two typical toll highway service stops in Ohio where we stopped to change drivers, we had Starbucks coffee at the first stop, and an awesome - and huge - chef salad at the second one.

Sunday morning we hopped from Mt. Prospect right onto rte 90 and followed it through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and New York to Albany a day and a half later, with only a detour around and through Cleveland, OH ( 80, 480, and 71 back to 90). It has tolls over and over and we’re curious how much that will add up to – it takes our EZ Pass so we don’t really know the cost…

We saw Lake Michigan only very briefly on Sunday in Cleveland, too brief to tell, but Lake Erie was in view a little longer later on, and it was still full of ice. We drove parallel to Lake Ontario, but too far away to see it. The roadsides and fields are not really greening up yet. The day was uneventful and we pulled in at the motel in Seneca Falls around dinner time. We asked the counter girl for a good place to eat and she directed us to a bar, but “a gentlemen’s bar, it’s nice”. It was still a little noisy. But the food was great. And not instant. Yeay for local eateries!

Monday 4/13, day 16. The last day of our trip! And only a little more than half a day. Just before Albany, NY we finally left route 90, and via a little piece of 87 – the same 87 we drive when we go around New York City – we ended up on route 7. Here we left the interstate highway system. It’s swift and straight, but not as much fun as the smaller roads.  Route 7 brought us to the Vermont border, renamed itself route 9, and dove head-first into the Green Mountains. It was not cold, in the 60’s, but there were still plenty of snow blobs under the pine trees and ice blobs on the steep stone “walls” where the road is cut into the granite mountain. Like half-melted giant icicles, ready to crash down at the side of the road. The pre-spring Green Mountains were still white, and the temperature dropped 10 degrees while we climbed the ridge’s spine. It warmed back up on the other side and in no time we were in New Hampshire. We felt at home right away, because rte 9 takes you over Keene to Hillsboro to Henniker, a section we are so familiar with from visiting Niamh when she went to college, and more recently from  kayaking ventures and a visit to the Rhododendron State Park last July.

We had a bet going about what time we would get home. Henk thought 1 PM, I figured more 2 o’clock because he’s always rounding down, and besides, we were going to get groceries in Hillsborough. However, once the list was ready and I estimated we needed five grocery bags and looked around my feet where I would put them – no room in the back of the car, when we open any door stuff slides out – we decided not to get anything on the way in. So Henk won the bet.

Coming home was wonderful. But then you unpack the car, your darling husband immediately starts doing our taxes, you go to the closest grocery store in Warner, come home, and start clearing up the mess. Tuesday Henk steadily worked on reducing our tax burden while I went to renew my driver’s licence and passport. Oh well.

Now, onwards to getting the house better organized than the first efforts back in November. Plan the future yard. Make a bedroom and bathroom on the attic. The usual stuff for the Oolders…