Road Trip Day 1

2006 Road Trip Vacation – 2006-09-23

I purchased a voice recorder to take notes with for my journey… I’m going to post my raw notes to give you a feel for my thoughts as I go through the day… enjoy!

• Here we go… it’s a little after 4pm on September 23^rd and it’s a little later than I wanted to take off but hey, I’m ok with it. It’s a rainy day, cloudy, got the rental car… it’s not bad, not luxurious… a Nissan Altima 18k miles…. Been waiting on our crashed mail server to finish off some work before I left, but as luck would have it, the server just came up right after I left! I just coming out of Target from buying this thing (recorder), a knife, corkscrew (my buddy gave me a bottle of his home made vino for the trip), and I’m thinking it’s time to hit the road!

• So my initial direction is south on route 59, not sure where the hell I’m going… just going south… don’t know where I’ll turn, but for now I’ll just head south… this ought to be an adventure to say the least…

• So yeah I’m thinking one of the strategies I need to follow is not to take expressways, it will probably be more interesting on side roads… even with the weather the way it is… clouds menacing and tornados last night, if I stay on the county and state highways it ought to be more interesting. Another thing I need to do is make sure I keep the gas tank topped off… one of the problems you have with these small towns is you never know where the gas stations are or how late they stay open…. So I should just top it off at about half a tank… as I pass through Plainfield gas is about $2.61 so we’ll see how the prices change as I head south…

• I’ve decided to get the camera out and put on the lens just in case I see a shot while I’m stopped at a corner, but I’m looking at it and thinking what if I have to make a sudden stop and the thing flies onto the floor… so I put my jacket on the floor to soften the potential fall…. This is probably a stupid idea.

• You know, it hasn’t been even 20 minutes since I left and I’m sitting here in traffic on route 59… I mean this is one of the reasons I need to get away, I mean what the Hell is going on? There’s nothing going on… this is friggin Plainfield, friggin route 59, friggin Illinois… I mean there’s not supposed to be stand-still traffic!

• So one of the things I had to do before I left was free up some drive space on my laptop so I wouldn’t have to constantly clean up files while I upload images from my camera… I have a USB hard drive, and was able to free up about 12 gig of space… hope that’s enough to get through the week… I’m gonna get off of 59 now… traffic sux

• Well it turns out the traffic was due to a detour and of course the detour sign says right, and I’m in the left turn lane, lol. So I’m gonna turn left and of course I’ll probably be on a dead end street and have to turn around…. We’ll see…

• Well this didn’t take long…. I’m giving up on the county roads… I know this area anyway… so I’m getting on 55 south and get off the highway in an area that I don’t know…

• So I got on 55 south off of 52… a bunch of road construction signs so I’m sitting here thinking… one, did I bring the camera mount to my tripod or leave it in my old camera bag like an idiot? 2, how long will it take me not to check my email every 5 minutes…. And 3…. I forgot 3…

• LOL – number three was I wonder what it will be that I’ve forgotten to bring with me – apropos that I forgot number 3 huh?

• Well the 2^nd guessing begins… it’s raining so hard that I cannot see through my windshield so I’m thinking that maybe I should have gone west, but I’m gonna keep pushing south and make a decision in Bloomington

• Well here’s one of my 1^st little jaunts … I’m driving down 55 and watching the sun to the west of me… but 1^st things 1^st… I went 2 hours without having to stop at a restroom so that’s good… anyway, I’m getting off 55 and going to drive toward the sun and see if I can get some pix before the end of the day…. I think this is route 24 and it’s about 48 miles to Peoria… yah, maybe I’ll just stay in Peoria tonight… we’ll see

• So you gotta love small town Midwest America… so I stop at this small town, I don’t even know what it is… it only has 2 gas stations and can’t be more than 2 blocks deep on either side of the highway… anyway I stop for gas and the price is 2.21… I get ready to start pumping and a lady runs out saying “Wait! We’re resetting the price…. Down!”… we’ll I can’t pass that up so I go inside, buy some diet pepsi and they drop the price to $2.19… rock n roll – God bless America

• So this is pretty cool – I’m in el paso Illinois on route 24, just to the south of me are some of the nastiest looking clouds I’ve ever seen… perhaps the worst I’ve seen since we lived in South Dakota …. In front of me and above me are pretty clear skies… the sun’s beaming on my smiling face… this is pretty cool

• So right out side of el paso is basically the intersection for 39 south or 51 north or whatever…. And I’m just gonna blow on by this guy…. South of me is nasty… west of me is sunny… that’s a pretty easy decision to make.

• So it’s about 6:41 and I’m pulling into Peoria and I think I’m on 151, but it’s … whatever.. there was the most glorious sunset as I came into Peoria down the hill over the Illinois river… I wish there would have been a good place to pull over for some shots, but I managed to stick the camera out the window to get a couple of shots.

• So somehow I wound up winding my way around Peoria and I missed the sunset – no good places to stop – too many obstructions… so I’m on 74 west… don’t know where this is going to lead me, but I hope I can find a place with internet access so I can finish the work I wasn’t able to last night… looks like I’m on my way to Moline… which is weird… more north than I thought… anyway…

• Well as the sun goes down it’s a little after 7 now and what I’d call dusk – really too dark to take pix – not hard core driving time – 20 miles to Galesburg Illinois and I’ll probably try to find a place there… right now I’m gonna put in Dark Star Safari by paul thouroux…. One of my wifes recommendations… we’ll see how it is…

• Alright so we’re cooking with gas… I didn’t make it all the way to Galesburg, I’m in Knoxville, but who cares… there’s a super 8 here in Knoxville and they have free wireless internet so this is what I’m calling home for the evening so yeah me!