July 2 Day 2

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Day 2 is here, and the plan is to travel from Elkhart Indiana to St. Paul Minnesota.  This of course, requires a trek through Chicago, and I hate driving through Chicago!!  We packed the trailer and bike and by 8:30 we were on the road.  Traffic was pretty light until we hit the Gary Indiana area, where it became obvious that today was a holiday weekend, and everyone seemed to be heading somewhere.  Lot's of boats and campers in tow, RV's and truckers heading down the road, and plenty of these out there too....  

We passed by the Tire-Rack warehouse in Indiana.  This is a great place to buy tires online, as their prices are great, and even with shipping charges you can save a good amount over local tire stores.  The best part, is that the local tire stores will still mount and balance them for you.  I bought the last set of tires for our Chrysler 300C from Tire-Rack, and even with shipping, mounting, and balancing, I ended up saving about $150 over just buying them from the local NTB store.  Matter of fact, the tire that is currently on the back of the Goldwing came from Tire-Rack. 

Once we hit the Chicago area (outer-belts), it became toll way central.  It seems like you hit a toll area every few miles.  This year we planned ahead and acquired an EZ-Pass.  The EZ-Pass made this area a cinch to travel through.  We did not actually have to pass through a single booth along the way, as every toll area we passed had high speed lanes which are set up to read your EZ-Pass tag as you shoot through at 60 mph.  Only those who need to pay cash have to actually pass through the actual booths.

In the photo below, you can see the arch over the road that contains the hardware to read the EZ-Pass tags on the fly.

Once beyond the Chicago area most of the views were of corn, corn, and more corn.  Not too exciting, but it's the cost of heading west.

Even with the limited sights, Lennie spent some time trying to get some photos.  The next couple were taken at the state borders.  The entry into Illinois,

Wisconsin,

and Minnesota.  This was our first time in both Wisconsin and Minnesota on the bike.

We passed by the Wisconsin Dells area, and saw this little rock formation along the side of the highway.  The Dells area is known for the striking sandstone formations along the Wisconsin River.  We also passed a ton of water parks.  The Dells area actually proclaims itself as the "Water park capital of the world".  With the 90+ degree weather and high humidity, we were temped to stop at one, but in the end we kept trucking along toward St. Paul. 

The rest of the ride was uneventful, if not somewhat boring.  Lennie with a camera, is like a little kid with a new toy, even when there are no interesting photo ops, she finds things photograph... like a shot of the bike dash from over my head...

and even a self portrait :)

Tomorrow looks like another nice weather day, and we plan to get across the remainder of Minnesota, and most of North Dakota.  This will put is in Dickinson ND, just outside of Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

For stats, we covered 545 miles today, bringing our trip total to 817.  It took us just under 11 hours, including gas and food stops to get to St. Paul.  Below is a map of the route from today.