Blogs from Joliet, Illinois, United States, North America

Sept 15, 2016 So today marks 2 weeks since we left Port Dover, and the day we leave the Great Lakes behind. We are about 10 miles away from Chicago, so in an hour or so, we will enter the Illinois River which we will travel on for about 300 miles until we join with the Mississippi. Since I have only been on Abigail on the lakes, I have no idea what to expect it to be like on the rivers. But it should be calmer cruising. Since our last blog, we have travelled 800 miles. On Sunday, Sept 11, we arrived in Kewaunee Wisconsin. With a small craft advisory issued for Monday, and threats of up to 30 mile/hour gusts and 9 foot waves, we decided to stay put for a couple days. The town ... read more

Geo: 41.5248, -88.0851"If you ever plan to motor west,Travel my way, take the highway, that's the best.Get your kicks on Route 66.It winds from Chicago to L.A.More than 2000 miles all the way,Get your kicks on Route 66." Technically Route 66 starts somewhere in Chicago but we're going to join it in Joliet (just south of Chicago) but we're not planning on doing too many of the larger cities (either because we've already been there or are planning to visit later) so we picked Joliet so we could visit the prison home of Jake of Blues Brothers fame (I think Chris G spent a couple of days here as well). Thanks to the song and a bunch of movies, most people have heard of Route 66 but it doesn't really exist anymore so you have to ... read more

Day Forty-Two is another day with a lot to write about. Just putting this out there so you won't think I've given up on blogging altogether. Hope you've enjoyed our trip so far, we have. Some days there's just so much happening that it takes more than a day to write about it. I think I said that about Day Thirty-Eight. I see that post is always the most recent blog even though it was posted before Day Thirty-Eight. That means this one will be the same because I put the actual date the events took place on the real posts, not the date of post. I'm now a full seven days behind. Luckily we're back to driving every couple of days so after Day Forty-Two, they should be somewhat quick and easy to write. Thanks ... read more

Today was much like yesterday, 427 miles, not much traffic to start, but lots of trucks in the afternoon as we got closer to Chicago, and when we got really close – brutal traffic. It rained all around us all day long, but we were lucky and didn’t get any rain until we were at dinner in Joliet Illinois, which is where we are spending the night. We are really looking forward to getting to Sturgis, which is where we stop riding on interstates with lots of trucks, and start riding on back roads and stopping to take lots of pictures. If you are following our progress on spotwilla: http://spotwalla.com/tripViewer.php?id=52d150297cb4735c3 you will notice that it looks like we drove a straight line that isn’t on any road. It is because the battery in the device died ... read more