The Long Journey Home

No one likes going home after vacation.

Our little foray into the Black Hills left us wanting more time to travel and to see more of South Dakota. We all agreed that we need to come back and spend some time in the Badlands. It just wasn’t meant to be on this trip, but it gives us something to look forward to for next time.

And so we climbed into Kevin, continued east… 1,740ish miles.

With only a few hours to travel after hitting up Wall Drug, we hunkered down in a rest area for a few hours of shut-eye before yesterday’s long haul. It was a twelve -hour driving day that began at 7:30 AM and ended at precisely at 7:38 PM. I only know this because I tried all day to keep our arrival time before 7:30 PM and at 7:27 PM with only two minutes left in our drive, we were DETOURED 10 minutes. (Do you play these mind games with your GPS? It’s the only way I can chunk out the time on these extended drives.)

Rob and I share the driving and yesterday was my turn. Passing through the remainder of South Dakota, Minnesota and Illinois we decided on taking a more southerly route to avoid Chicago at all costs. Remember that harrowing nighttime journey through downtown Chicago on the way out? Well, there was absolutely no way we were taking Kevin back there during rush hour! Back roads all the way.

The landscapes out here are courtesy of corn.

It is simply EVERYWHERE. The land is lush and green and so flat. Grain elevators pop up on commercial farms.

For most of the day, I drove by myself, giving Rob a break and allowing him some time to hang out with the girls in the back, watching movies and playing games. All the kids have been simply incredible travelers. Yes, they have their electronics, full access to snacks, and a bathroom, but let’s be real. There is a LOT of sitting and being fairly still. The silliness finally set in around 6:00 yesterday afternoon. There may have been a little wrestling in the dinette area.

The ride on the smaller highways is downright enjoyable. Traffic is light and there’s some pretty fascinating sights to see out here if you keep your eyes peeled (you’re just going to have to believe me – no pics because I was driving). Kevin sped past the largest frying pan in Illinois and also the largest truck stop (in Illinois? in the U.S.? in the world? I’m not sure how this is qualified.)

The last hour of last night’s travel was down a maze of country roads, leading us to the KOA Kankakee. The campground is literally in the middle of a cornfield – beautiful, but remote. And so dark!

It was 5:30 AM when we rolled out of Kankakee – a lovely little town in Illinois, about an hour south of Chicago. We tried to map a route on secondary roads that would help us avoid Chicago and Google Maps tried to punish us by trying to take us down gravel, one-way “roads” to get us on the interstate. I mean, the road closures and detours every three streets did not help either. Poor Kevin bumped along down roads she never should have seen. At some point, she lost another hubcap, so now we are down two hubcaps.

Fast forward to 45-minutes later, when we finally turned onto a “major” road with yellow lines and guardrails. Rob and I may have let out a little “whoop”, herd by no one, as all the kids were still asleep in the back. I was half convinced we were going to drive around the cornfields of Illinois, running out of gas and having to hitchhike to the nearest farmhouse.

And so, where are we now? Well, at noon, we made our first stop for lunch at a KFC/DQ and gas station combo somewhere in Ohio west of Cleveland. That was around two hours ago. The GPS says 9:05 left to drive today. Translation: 12 more hours to drive with gas, food, and sanity breaks. My guess is that we will crawl into the driveway sometime after 1:00 AM. We will be tired and cranky, but at least the dogs will be happy to see us – not so sure about the cat!

And tomorrow, the unpacking begins and life returns to normal.

But until then, time to turn up the 90s alternative rock on Sirius radio and grab another snack, put my feet up and savor the last few hours of this epic road trip!

*Please enjoy this treasure that I forgot to post in the last chapter. Yes, those are matching sheriff badges.”

“Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again, in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.”

~Pat Conroy