Oubache Trails Campground, Vincennes, Indiana Two weeks in one place, even if two different campgrounds, is a long stay. I think we needed it, though, in order to adequately explore Chicago (Can anyone ‘adequately’ explore a big city?), and the Indiana Lakeshore of Lake Michigan. But all things eventually come to an end, so we broke camp yesterday, hitched up and headed south. We could have taken Interstate 65 South towards Indianapolis, but I don’t particularly enjoy being passed by big semis. And, besides, part of it is a toll road and who wants to pay extra for my dual-axled tiny trailer. So we took state and US highways south. Speed is somewhat limited, but I can’t really travel more than 65 mph, so that wasn’t a real problem. And you do have a lot of ... read more

Oak Park, Illinois We drove into Chicago again for Joan’s last Chicago rebellion item - the Frank Lloyd Wright houses at Oak Park. Try as I could to come up with a train schedule from here in Indiana all the way across the big metropolitan area, nothing was going to work very well. Google said we were looking at a minimum 3 hour trip using public transportation. That was going to make for a very long day. So I ended up fueling up the car and we drove the entire 60 miles using the freeway system most of the way. As someone told us earlier in our trip, Chicago only has two seasons, winter and construction, so the highways were a mess with lots of orange barrels and signs. Our car GPS doesn’t know much about ... read more

Dunewood Campground/Michigan City, IN After a certain amount of time the piled up dirty clothes begins to take on a certain aroma and our tiny little house starts to smell like a high-school gym. At that point we know it is time to do laundry. Couple that with some of the disappointments of the weekend, and the stresses of moving campgrounds, and, well, it was time for another down day. So we slept in and then kind of planned the day. We had an additional problem to deal with too. I think I mentioned earlier that we were having problems getting refills with a couple of Joan’s prescriptions. Joan had called Humana last week telling them about the problem with the ‘refill dates’ and all that and, three times, she told them not to ship the ... read more

Hyde Park, Chicago, IL We’ve been using our current campground as a home base while we explore two very different areas - the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore and the City of Chicago. Mostly it works, especially for the shorter trips to the Lakeshore areas for beach walking and hikes. I have to admit, though, that managing our Chicago experiences has been difficult at times, mostly because of the logistics. There are just two ways to get to Chicago - commuter train and car. The Train is cheaper, but you are bound by their schedule and on the weekends, that schedule can really be difficult to work with because there are many fewer trains running. Driving takes less time and works on your timetable, but, including gas and parking, ends up being expensive. The frustrations of finding ... read more

West Beach & Bailly/Chellberg. Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore Had to do a ‘dump and fill’ yesterday. That’s shorthand for dump the sewer tanks and fill the fresh water tanks. While we are paying a fairly decent price for this campground - $30/night - it only provides electrical hookups at each site. You can fill up your RV’s water tanks at a central station, and, instead of a sewer connection here at the site, you have to take it to a ‘dump station’ to unload your holding tanks. We can manage with our tank sizes for about five full days before sewer tanks are full and water tanks are empty, but after that happens then we really have to hitch up the trailer and mosey on over to the service area and take care of business. We ... read more