Day 3 of the Todyssey, after Diane and Todd enjoyed their parking lot coffee, we decided to stay off of I-90 for a while and drive on a route along Lake Erie instead. The route was disappointing in that it offered almost no views of Lake Erie, but the "Coastal Ohio" highway signs really amused Diane and Todd, since Ohio is an interior state. It pained Todd to drive right by the roller coasters at Cedar Point, but even he had to admit, he didn't want to go deal with Fourth of July weekend crowds just to ride some roller coasters.
We stopped for a nice walk and picnic at Maumee Bay State Park right on the lake. As soon as we pulled up, I got really excited because Todd said I was going to be able to swim. Alas, swimming was not to be. There was a sort of pond with a huge sandy beach area for swimming, but there were signs discouraging swimming due to elevated bacterial levels.
We walked from that pond up over a paved walking trail that ran along the actual lake and down onto the short of the lake where there were also recreation areas, but more signs discouraging swimming due to blue-green algae and elevated bacterial levels. There were several large dead fish washed up on the shore, and I really would have enjoyed having a good roll in those, but Diane wouldn't let me.
From there we drove on, back to I-90 out of Ohio into Indiana and then Illinois and up through Chicago. Since it was late afternoon on Saturday, Diane and Todd figured traffic wouldn't be too bad so it wouldn't be too stressful to drive the Big Rolling Crate through a major city. There was actually a bunch of construction, so there was traffic, but it was slow like us and it gave Diane and Todd plenty of time to take pictures of the skyline out the windows and play every song they could think of that mentioned Chicago.
Although none of us has ever been to Chicago, the Big Rolling Crate is for camping not for city exploration, and anyway, I personally hate cities, so we didn't stop there at all. Instead we kept driving until we came to a very nice truck stop where Diane and Todd took showers and got snacks.
To my dismay, we weren't done driving yet, even though it was getting late and we had crossed a time zone that day, meaning it felt even later to us than it was. Instead we pushed on to Wisconsin, even stopping at yet another Walmart Parking lot in the town of Tomah. We arrived about 1:30 AM Central Time. This one had even more campers in it, and like the one in Ohio, it was 24-hours, which made Diane very happy. I liked it because it had the best pet area of anyplace we stopped so far, a huge field of nice soft grass where we played with my football before bed.
So far the worst state we drove through was Indiana. The pet walk areas at all the rest stops were full of litter and the grass was so crunchy and pointy in hurt my feet. The rest areas in New York and Minnesota were the best, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Minnesota is for the next post.
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