July 22 Day 22

We woke up early this morning with plans to travel across Iowa, Illinois, and into Elkhart Indiana. The weather has been very nice throughout most of our travels, but the days heading home have been rather stormy. Today was no exception. Early in the morning, a pretty large frontal storm system moved through, and we decided to wait a while before hitting the road. We ended up getting on the road around 11:15 AM.

Once on the road, the conditions were pretty good, and we ended up trailing the storm front for most of the day.

No real pics today, as there is not a whole lot to see. Lennie did like this photo of 3 roadways running into the distance.

As we made our way down the road, life was good, so I hit auto pilot and tried to take a little nap... :)

Life was indeed good, until we hit the Joliet/Chicago/Gary areas. In Joilet, the main bridge across the Des Plaines River was under construction. Traffic was backed up so badly, we decided to get off the highway and find a detour around the construction. We were successful, but it meant a half hour delay.

Then we hit the Chicago area, and traffic was horrible. It took us nearly an hour to travel 10 miles.

Once traffic loosened up and the speeds starting picking back up, we came to another grinding halt in Gary Indiana road construction.

Overall, we were delayed about 2 hours. At least we never caught up to the storm front, and we ended up remaining dry the entire day :)

Tomorrow is day 23, and we should be home early in the afternoon. We only have about 300 miles to cover, and it should be a pretty easy drive, as long as the weather is reasonable. I look forward to getting back home, but at the same time it is sad that our trip is coming to an end.

Over the weekend, I will get a final update completed with our overall travel map and stats.

Info for today indicates that we covered 322 miles, bringing our trip total to 6400 miles. Below is a map of our route from today.