Passing around the rainy city (Day 4)

Chicago might be called the windy city, but that wind came with a lot of rain all morning. We first heard it hitting the roof of the trailer around 4am. Juliet opened the window blind, only to note that the lightening flash came immediately after the thunder clap, so the storm was real close. But we stayed nice and dry, happy we weren’t in a tent. We woke up to sounds of the commuter train line that runs behind the campground. (Nice campground otherwise.)

The rain let up enough for us to pack up without too much hassle, but it started again as we skirted around Chicago. Despite having several friends (and offers to driveway park/camp) in Chicago, we needed to press on to make a reservation for tomorrow. Tons of road construction and confusing “oasis” rest areas (if you pull into the truck side, no gasoline, only diesel) made driving stressful.

Today was another day of doing a lot of driving to cover miles to get out West, but we made one side stop. After making it past Chicago, we drove into Rockford, Illinois to eat at the Stockholm Inn, a massive restaurant partly owned by the guitarist from the 80s group Cheap Trick that serves “the best Swedish pancakes in the world" (!) all day long. They were good, but not worth driving 25 minutes through strip mall hell to get there. (Still, we sure do understand the restaurant’s appeal to the large population of card-playing, Fox News-watching retirees whose Buicks filled the parking lot.)

(I have to admit, I kept singing the theme to the Rockford Files all day. Mike Post, you were a TV theme genius...)

We’re passing by a lot of car and RV factories, wondering if they are open or not. (I was sad to not stop at the RV and motor home hall of fame in Elkhart, Indiana - maybe on the way back.) Yesterday they were running an autocross at Chrysler Toledo’s plant, and Chrysler’s currently closed Belvedere’s plant had a skeleton crew. The news on the big screen at lunch was GM’s bankruptcy; their Janesville factory is just out of sight from the highway.

We drove into Wisconsin, stopping at a roadside produce stand to buy strawberries - the first pick of the year. I’m bummed at missing strawberry season at home, so we’re glad to grab these. I bottomed something out pulling into the produce stand, but nothing’s apparently ripped off the bottom of the van or trailer yet.

Tonight’s stop is Bob’s Riverside Resort in Spring Green, Wisconsin. We’re camped pretty much in the middle of a field, and most of the place is empty. At least the laundry is cheap, and Spring Green has one of those useful old-time hardware stores downtown.

Why the hardware store? The trailer needed its first fix: the lousy roads on the way here made one of the screws holding the window blinds pop out. The screw is probably lost forever in the couch/bed, so we bought a few more.

Spring Green is an interesting mix of the Midwest and crunchy upscale. There are lots of Frank Lloyd-esque buildings downtown. We were afraid we’d have to eat dinner in a bar (smoking inside isn’t prohibited yet, the one particularly nice eatery is closed on Mondays, and the mosquitoes are too bad to want to grill outside) until we found that the Spring Green General Store’s café was open. Some salads, sandwiches, and chili were a good idea after a lunch of pancakes swimming in butter and lingenberries.

So we’re parked in the field, running the trailer’s AC for the first time (never knew it worked until now, and glad it does), and swatting mosquitoes that get by the screen door.

Tom