Leaving Chicago, heading back out on the freeway, we found that once again, our timing assured us of plenty of opportunity to observe the other drivers' faces as they appeared close-up in our rearview mirror: Rush Hour!. I spent some of my time spent at 1-10 miles-per-hour conversing with a friend from the area, as he was telling me what to expect as I passed through Illinois: His own ancestral land I had not yet seen. My internal alarm gave a little hiccup when, thinking we were on I80 West, my friend said "O'Hare?", but said nothing more, apparently not wanting me to launch into an explanation of our itinerary. You know: As a question. When I mentioned I was passing it. He should have maybe said something 'cuz I wasn't really paying attention to much besides perpetuating the further avoidance of collision with other cantankerous humans sharing the same roadspace as myself. Truth was, we were heading for Washington state, via the Dakotas, and the first thing that would have indicated to us that we were on the wrong road would have been the state of Wisconsin, had it not been for Tim noticing the lack of signs or othe indication that we were still on I80, since we we had not observed the location of the split between I80 and I90: The split happens just before the southern tip of Lake Michigan. Indeed, our turn was east of Gary, Indiana and would have taken us nowhere near Chicago at all, but alas, we just had to see Chicago up close and ended up on I90, heading for the northern states. Then, seemingly just to confuse us on our re-alignment mission, we had a psychic run-in with the children of the soybeans.....

All the pictures of this section looked like this, blurry and dark, and distinctly rural. What Tim and I ended up attempting to do was to take tha major artery I39/Hwy51 due south from where we were and get back on I80, but we missed, and saw some real rural Illinois, and gave me an official reason to put this story on the site. Backroads for hours, but no gravel, sorry!

After getting directions, we overnighted at Rock Falls, Illinois, after what seemed like an endless four hours winding through a maze of corn and soybean fields. As usual, Tim slept in a motel room, while I enjoyed the comforts of sleeping in the bus. I liked sleeping in the bus. Why on earth would I sleep in a sterile (hopefully), lackluster motel room when I could have the air and sound and smells and vibe of each area affecting my dreams? Besides, I was "bonding" with the bus, perhaps even "having an affair" with a baywindow (don't tell Bartholomew!), and since my first night in New York, my bed had been the one in the Great Pumpkin, and would stay so through the last of the adventure.



Onward to Omaha, crossing over the Mississippi (which we stopped and touched, oh boy!), lunch in Des Moines, at a homey restaurant/gift shop with neat things on the ceiling, fuel in Des Moines as well, at a strangely named chain: "Kum and Go", and with an exquisite double mocha from Caribou Coffee (a midwest chain far superior to Starbuck's), we saw more fields, more corn, more trucks, and a very happy "blupe" or "bloop", as Tim called those silly-looking water towers when he was a kid. Apparently, one means of aquiring income in the Midwest is renting ad space on a billboard in your yard, the grasshoppers are pretty, and folks in this neck of the woods like tractors.....so much that they stack them in pretty piles....

Our destination for this early day, Omaha, was just about what could be accurately called the halfway point of our voyage, and as such, was not only cause for cautious celebration, but an opportunity to meet some Buskatiers, put faces to names, and get a couple minor maintenance issues dealt with before tackling the plains.....

Next page: CANYCA #7