After 17 days  and 3,700 miles , I finally made it to Boston (actually Somerville). Yay !!!!!!

After spending two nights in Pittsburgh with Illah, Marti and kids, I continued along the Lincoln Highway until Chambersburg. Consequently I didn’t make much progress timewise towards Boston. The road here was nice, going through small towns and some classic 40’s and 50’s icons.  As I got on the Interstate late in the day, got a taste of the agressive driving – was tailgated by a truck driving at 70 mph.

I decided to get off the interstate and travel along the Old Lincoln Highway. The driving was very slow. I started the day with the driving time to Pittsburg at about 4 hours via the interstate, after 3 hours of driving I was still over 3 hours away.  The route is now a mix of cute old towns, business districts (walmarts and car dealerships) and corn fields.

Not a particularly interesting drive today through Indiana and Ohio – stayed at campground ouside of Toledo that is mostly full time seasonal residents with campers.

We camped on some private property and in the morning had a nice conversation with the owner, John, who runs a sawmill and has blueberry pickings on his property in the morning.  We drove through country roads to our Motel near Chicago’s O’Hare airport. We then drove into the city to meet Andre’s friend Joe. They hadn’t seen each other for over 20 years. We had diner and walked around town.

Andre left on an early flight Tuesday morning so he could get back to work, and I have spent the past few days visiting my cousin Lisa and her family. Tomorrow I continue on East.

After traversing most of Minnesota, we crossed the Mississippi into Wisconsin, We then decided to follow the River route and drove south along the Missisippi , crossing back again into Iowa for part of the way. We made it into thw north west corner of Illinois at the end of the day.

We drove out of Custer State Park wit h closer views of Mt Rushmore and within an hour were in totally different scenery in Badlands National Park. We then had a long drive to cross SD. We did amuse ourselves with some Americana by going to Corn Palace in  Mitchell, SD. We finally crossed the state line  into Minnesota and arrived at dusk at Luverne and pitched tent in the nearby Blue Mounds State Park. Not long after we had a pretty intense laser light show, that is a thunderstorm – see video below

This day we did not make much eastward mileage, but toured around the Black Hills and stayed the night in Custer State Park.