The weather was clear, but cool (unseasonably so?) with temperatures peaking in the high fifties. We decided to hop off the freeway to do a quick tour of Holland, MI, since it was a topic of a recent travel video we rented. It was definitely worth it, even though we missed the tulip festival by a few weeks. This is what I like to refer to as a “button town”, meaning to the uninitiated, that it is “as cute as a button”. And so it was, with beautiful old homes, tulip lined streets, and even a resident wooden clog maker. The town sparkled like the Emerald City. We stopped and walked through the town’s central park, complete with an old fashioned band-stand, and tulips everywhere. It is along these trees, full, dense, and hanging low, that I cought my RV TV antenna on a branch and ripped out the raising mechanism. Oh well, who needs TV with a whole string of button towns ahead.

We escaped the gravitational pull of Chicago, which was considerable. The decision to “see” Chicago was both a good and a bad one. We whizzed down Lake Shore Drive trying to see as much as possible while not infuriating the local drivers. They are an unruly lot, reminding me of LA drivers, i.e., not letting you “in”, etc. and honking a lot. I didn’t see any guns though. I was hoping to be able to spot a Chicago hot dog vendor so Abby could sample what she kept saying was the “local fare”, but no such luck. Pulling over in anything, let alone an RV pulling a jeep would have been sure death. We hopped back onto the Interstate that would take us East and ended up having to pay about $12 for a 3 mile stretch. The toll road continued, and I started worrying about having enough cash at that rate/mile. Fortunately, once out of the city, the rates declined significantly. On through Gary Indiana. It’s probably a nice town, once you get to know it, but from the freeway it looked like Chicago’s poor relative.

By this time, I was growing weary having negotiated the 50 foot beast through dense traffic and angry drivers. We pushed on to Michigan City, where I had made reservations the night before. We arrived exhausted, but satisfied that we had achieved some of our secondary objectives, such as visiting Abby’s mother’s old “hood”. If only we could have found an authentic Chicago hot dog stand! Nothing to commend this particular RV park I’m afraid, other than it was one of the few in the area East of Chicago, and for enough outside of the city to be graffiti free. At least we had a quiet, restful night.