Friday, June 10, 2016

Day 1 - Friday June 10 2016

June 10, 2016

David and Gwen picked Patsy and me up at the house at 5:30 am.  We made it through Nashville ahead of the morning commuters and stopped in White House Cracker Barrel for breakfast. We thought they were closed as there were only 4 cars in the parking lot.  I have never been in an empty CB.  We ate and crossed into Kentucky at 7:30 am and through Bowling Green by 7:45 - we should have stopped at National Corvette Museum. At 9:00 am we passed through Elizabethtown, KY, home of Ft Knox (thought maybe we could get a spot of gold to pay for this trip) and birthplace of Abraham Lincoln.   At 10:30 am (ET) we came into Louisville - it is never a good sign when you see a sign that says Major Construction - use alt route - oops we did not take alt route.  Construction was not too bad and we crossed the Ohio River into Indiana without too much confusion (good job on signage Kentucky DOT).  We stopped at Indiana Welcome Center and took the official state photo before moving on toward Indianapolis (passing by Austin, IN).  20 miles outside of Indianapolis the construction starts with 45 mph speed limit.  Speeding  is $1000 fine and reckless driving is 6 years in jail - guess someone is serious about protecting construction workers.  We stopped north of Indianapolis, had lunch at Steak and Shake, filled up with gas (oh, yeh, the Megabus with 60 people also stopped and used up all ice and created long lines for bathrooms) and headed north with Lynn driving.  Traffic began slowing 20 miles south of Gary, IN and did not pick up until we decided to pay the toll and take I-90 toward Chicago.  The first toll was $.80 - rather than using the one dollar bills we had brought along, Gwen wanted me to use 3 quarters and a nickel.  There were 3 slots - one for dollars, one for credit card and one for coins (which I missed seeing).  I quickly put the first quarter in the slot for the credit card - bad move.  It go stuck so I took my second quarter to pry it out - it came out and fell on the road.  I then asked for the dollar bill  which I successfully placed in the right slot.  The 2 dimes fell into a slot that must have been 10 feet away - I tried to open the door, but it was locked of course because transmission was in gear and not in park, so I floored it and drove off without the change.  We drove 20 miles on I-90 until traffic began moving at a snail's pace. I was using Waze - it was telling me to go one way and the van's GPS was telling me to go a different way.  For the next 1-1/2 hours I looked like Frogger moving from one lane to the next - not sure whether to exit right like Waze said or exit left like van said.  While confused, Gwen decided to open Google maps on her iPAD so I had 3 voices providing direction.  I finally  just got off I-90 and let Waze take us through the back streets of Chicago,  bypassing the I-90 traffic.  We made it to the hotel at 4:30 pm and met up with Sandra and Paul.  After checking in we had dinner at Gino's East.





3 comments:

  1. I'm sure Lynn was patient and calm at the toll booth =)

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  2. Tales of toll booths and traffic; Lynn's favorites ! ��

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  3. Interstate Highways- GOOD

    Toll Booths- BAD, BAD, BAD, EVIL

    ReplyDelete