Road Trip

We just completed another memorable family adventure. It was every bit as harrowing as bungee jumping into a burning vat of ravenous rattlesnakes. We took a trip to Chicago.

A normal family would fly to Chicago or take a train or drive any of the hundreds of modern expressways. A normal family might forego Chicago and go to anywhere else on the planet. We are not that normal family.

After extensive research consisting of watching “Chicago Fire” and a musical named after the city, I decided we’d save 3 or 4 dollars staying in the camper in Indiana and driving to the city. We’d get the city experience and wind down in the pastoral countryside. That sounds almost sane, doesn’t it? Wait, there’s more.

To make this a perfectly memorable trip, why not forget the Interstate and drive up old US 41? We did just that. I know now why they made interstates.

It takes a while just to get to Highway 41, as we all know. In the southern part of Indiana, it’s a good 4-lane on which you can make pretty good time if you make it through all of the 8,000 traffic lights some sadist installed. After Terre Haute there aren’t any more stop lights for a long time because the road turns into a 2 lane winding goat trail laid out by a drunk. Dragging a 6,000 pound trailer around tree infested hairpin turns makes this an especially remarkable experience.

Eventually the 4-lane unrolls again and you’re off to the next red light, and the next, and on and on.
Our destination of Cedar Lake scrolled past before we knew it. I had the pleasure of turning into a dead end alley and backing a trailer between a light pole and a covey of gang-bangers so we could turn around. After some swearing and screeching brakes we got on the right track until we got lost again.

Our RV Park claimed to be on 137th Avenue, which didn’t really exist. I later learned the address was implied and everyone else knew exactly how to translate the address to English.

While I’m thinking about it, no self respecting town needs 137 streets. Ten numbered streets are quite enough. If you exceed 10 streets, you need to make it another town. I can say Bob lives in the same town as Bill, but if they live 15 miles apart that’s not really true. They live in different places. If your town is that big, and you say “I’m going to the store in town” and you disappear, nobody will know which store you went to. Keep towns small. It’s safer.

So after 5 phone calls and 3 threats by other drivers, we found our designated RV spot. It was nice, so it was worth the effort getting there.
Not having learned anything the previous day, we continued up Highway 41 to Chicago the next morning. Without the trailer, how hard could it be?
Being an old road, 41 takes a lot of turns but is well marked every once in a while. Somewhere on the South side, a sign is missing. I didn’t know that at first but I figured it out.

I learned a sign was missing and I’d missed a turn after about an hour on 87th Street. To the uninitiated, that is a bad South-side street. The neighborhood got exponentially worse as we drove. I wasn’t sure where I was at. I could have gotten my bearings from the sun but it was hiding due to the bad neighborhood. My wife turned on the GPS but it just kept saying “You’re an idiot”. The thousands of people on the street looked angrier and more dangerous the more I drove. I think some of them were zombies hungry for my meager brains.

We finally asked directions which directed us to drive in circles for a while. After seeing the same gang graffiti on a wall over the same wino 14 times we turned against directions and eventually found a major road. The GPS said, “That was luck” and then directed us to downtown where we got lost in a much better neighborhood.

We decided to go to the Navy Pier because we couldn’t find any of the other attractions. We found a parking garage too small for a truck but paid $43 to park there anyway.

The rest of the adventure wasn’t nearly as exciting or dangerous. We learned to be as rude as the natives and managed finding the truck at the end of the day. The sun frequented the area of the city we were in, so we found our way back to the RV on the mystery avenue. It ended up being a good trip.

The next time, I think we’ll try Route 66. Want to come along?