One Thousand Miles Away

I am about one thousand miles away from Sunderland now. Despite the weather being good today, it was the hardest drive. The reason was that I had to pass through Chicago, one of the biggest cities of the USA. I passed three state borders today: Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. I also crossed a time zone, now I am in the Central Time Zone, one hour lagging from the Eastern Time Zone. At the beginning, the road was pretty empty, since today was a weekend. At some point, there were two options, to go back to Toledo via I-90 east or to move towards Chicago via I-90 west. I proceeded towards Chicago. I spotted a few New York cars today, and felt like seeing some known neighbors! There were two possible routes to cross Illinois, one through Chicago and the other through Joliet, but the latter was much longer. I have a particular interest in the Joliet Prison as the famous TV show Prison Break was shot there, and which I visited once already. So I rather went for the more direct Chicago route. After I entered Indiana, the road signs changed a little, and I spotted a number of cars and trucks from many different states: Nebraska, Nevada, Maine, Indiana, South Dakota, Illinois, Ohio, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, Michigan, and so on. The hardest part was when crossing Chicago: the road was very busy and a few drivers were driving recklessly. Thanks to Google Map, it suggested me an alternate route through Indianapolis that avoids a crash and also saves 6 minutes. Illinois has I-Pass for toll. I was worried the entire time about getting some penalties, since I didn't have an I-Pass, but later I found out that I already had an I-Pass (EZPass) which I was unaware of. Apparently, EZPass covers I-Pass! When I was nearing Chicago, the sky became less clear and looked dusty, the same happens when I approach other big cities like New York, as all big cities are huge source of pollution. In today's breakfast, I had the leftover from last night's dinner, so didn't need to stop for breakfast. But I did stop three times today, first time for refueling, and later to get a Starbucks cold coffee (decaf of course).

Today's airbnb was just OK, the basics. It had an outdoor patio where I had part of my lunch. It was getting colder and I moved inside in the middle of the lunch. One good thing was that this airbnb had washer and dryer so I could do some laundry. Madison has a bit different landscape, it seemed kind of dry and less green.

Continue to Day 4