Day 37: Wisconsin Dells, WI to Allendale, MI

Tuesday July 19

Tues July 19 finds us enroute to Allendale, Michigan.  It is still very oppressive when we pull out of Wisconsin Dells KOA.  We had let the girls sleep in until about 9am, knowing they were tired.  We have about a 6.5 hour drive and 3 states to drive through today:  Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana; ending up in Michigan.  We will also loss an hour of time and be back on Eastern Time Zone when we pass into Michigan.  The traffic around the Chicago area is bad, even though we are going around the city itself.  Once in Indiana I notice how much trash there is on the side of the road.  It is very noticeable; tires and trash everywhere.  There is also a ton of traffic around the Indianapolis area.  This is where I start to feel very claustrophobic; trucks on either side of us and straight ahead.  I hate that boxed in feeling.  While driving in the Chicago area, we have the local news on and they are talking about the heat wave going on now and remembering the heat wave of 1995 when some 700 people died.  Unfortunately for them they also have major fog over Michigan Lake that they closed down the beaches because life guards could not see people in the water.  Once we cross the border into Michigan, we are close enough to the Lake to see the fog and it reminds me of the time we went to Newcastle Beach last summer and the fog was coming in off the ocean.  We never did get close enough to Lake Michigan to see the lake itself though.

Traveling through 4 states today!

We arrive at the KOA campground in Allendale around 7:45pm.  The campground is petty much in the middle of a corn field.  We are in a very residential area and the GPS took us down the side streets to get to the campground.  There are not even any signs advertising the KOA.  This is the only non pull through site of our trip but Scott does great placing the camper on the site.  We cook a quick dinner and get ready for a second day of travel.  Tomorrow we are crossing the boarder into Canada so we do some research on border crossing.  We end up dumping lots of food because meat, vegetables and dairy can not be carried across the border.  Thankfully we are running low on food anyways.