Day 1 - Toronto, Ontario to Rockford, Illinois (972 Km)

And the journey is on!


We packed up our little Tahoe (thanks Mr. V!) with everything one could possibly need for a cross country journey (and likely many more things we'll never need), and left town a day earlier then planned. Once we got accustomed to riding 10-feet higher off the road than we’re used to, we quickly fell in love with the vehicle that will be our home for the next four weeks. Somewhere just outside of Toronto, Vone said “I keep singing that song from the Simpson’s in my mind – Canyonero!” I was thinking the same thing. And so with that, Tahoe was dubbed Canyonero for the rest of the journey.

A long day of driving got us deep into the American Midwest as weleft Ontario and crossed through Michigan, Indiana, and most of Illinois. While we’re a little behind where we had hoped to be after the first day, we did achieve our primary goal of getting past Chicago – meaning we should see most of Monday morning’s rush-hour traffic in our rear-view mirror, heading in the other direction.

Our pace was slowed somewhat today by construction, construction and more construction. Long stretches of I-60 through Flint and Lansing were reduced to one lane for miles at a time, and I-94 through western Michigan and Indiana also saw many more lane closures. But that's ok, because we had these yummy "Freedom Cookies" that we picked up at a market outside Lansing.


Our original plotted course, laid out after weeks of research and puttering around on Microsoft Streets, was to take us through the heart of Chicago on I-90, northwest out off Illinois and into Wisconsin. Last week however, heeding warnings of construction through Chicago and noting that we’d be passing through in the middle of the afternoon, we charted an alternate course that would take us off I-94 onto I-80, passing just to the south of Chicago and westward into Iowa, before eventually heading north at Omaha to rejoin I-90. While this course would cost us roughly 20 miles, I figured we’d make it up in driving time.

Just south of Chicago we made what would turn out to be a bad choice. Seeing the exit for I-90 into Chicago, I quickly reasoned “hey it’s like 9:00 on a Sunday night, construction traffic couldn’t be that bad!” Thinking the whole reason for bypassing Chicago and taking a much more boring route through Iowa and Nebraska would no longer be necessary given the late hour on a Sunday night, I swerved the mighty Canyonero across three lanes and onto I-90 at the last possible second.

(The blue line on the map picture is our GPS trail - notice how I avoided using those pesky deceleration lanes!)

Bad choice.

This wasn’t just a little bit of road work, this was complete highway reconstruction. And on a toll-road nonetheless. There’s nothing I love more than PAYING to sit and stare at the break lights in front of me. What should have taken 30 minutes without traffic, took closer to 90 minutes. There has to be a point when traffic gets so bad that everyone would be better off if they just said “You know what, we’re just going to close this sucker down entirely for a year – find another way to get where you’re going. Pretty frustrating. You can probably imagine how Rob-who-quit-smoking-this-morning took that…

Chicago drivers seem bad enough without the additional challenges of construction related lanes reductions and spontaneous merging related challenges. Vone and I were both amazing by the prevalence of in-car televisions in this city. And not ones for the kid’s to watch cartoons in the backseat – we saw quite a few dash-mounted mini-TV’s that were obviously positioned for the driver to watch. One was even conveniently mounted to replace a rearview mirror! Not surprisingly, we fly up the guy’s ass as he crept along in the fast lane – guess we shouldn’t have been surprised that he didn’t see us coming!

As the clock crept towards 11:00pm Central time, and with 12 hours of driving completed, we were lured off the highway by the red digital glow of Motel 6’s “$46.99 per night” sign. So it’s here, in Rockford Illinois that we’ll stay tonight. Lilo is currently doing laps around the room, happy for the chance to stretch her little limbs after a day spent strapped into a car seat. Considering the length of today’s drive, Lilo was an absolute angel. This was her first experience in a forward-facing car seat, and she seemed to love being able to easily see Vone and I. This might also have helped with her previously frequent bouts of motion-sickness related vomiting. The frequent puker didn’t at all tonight, and even ate some carrots, celery and other snacks while on the move.

8 short hours of sleep and we’ll be back on the road again, heading west through Wisconsin, Minnesota, and South Dakota towards Mount Rushmore. We won’t reach it tomorrow night, but we’ll get close enough to visit on Tuesday morning.