Day Eleven

Well.

To be delicate, today was the, um, "least scenic" stretch of Route 20 I've seen so far. Almost all of it was through urban environs, and some of it was downright scary! My drive through the outskirts of Chicago wasn't too bad. There wasn't really any great photo opportunities, but at least it was peaceful. But when I got into the city, holy s***balls! After living in the suburbs in St Louis, in a small city under 100,000 people in Lawrence, and now in a town under 8,000 in Eudora, you just cannot be prepared to drive through a humongous monster like Chicago. And to complicate matters, the drivers in Chicago rate #1 in my book for worst drivers I have ever seen. Speeders, red light runners, weavers, and most of them are a combination of all three! ...Oh yeah, then there were also those times when I felt like my life was in danger! Best example I can give: I was coming up to a corner with a stop sign. There was a car parked at the corner, the driver was leaning over to the rolled down passenger's window, and there was a guy standing by said window with his hands slightly in the car. I pull up to the stop sign, and I see this almost certain to be drug transaction. That's when I realize, If they look over my direction and see the camera sitting on the tripod in my passenger's seat, I might get to find out if my rental insurance covers bullet holes! No one was coming the other way, I made the turn, and as I look back in the rearview mirror, the guy standing outside the car is looking at me driving away. "Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration, don't fail me now!" No shots fired, car is OK, heart rate decreasing. So let's just say you won't catch me driving around Chicago again anytime soon!

After Chicago came northwestern Indiana, which is almost all industry area. Not pretty. As I got closer to South Bend, things started getting more green, there were more trees, and my level of stress went way down. Being on campus wiped the stress out completely. Notre Dame has a beautiful campus! Most of the buildings look a little bit too similar, but overall I was very impressed. As you can tell from the few pictures that I post, most of them are from ND, as Chitown and NW Indy just wasn't cutting it in the way of great photos. So overall, it was an action packed day, definitely the most unique day of the trip so far, and one I hope doesn't repeat too much the rest of the way! Tomorrow takes me through the rest of Indiana and into Ohio, where I end up just outside of Cleveland. Only four more days till I hit Boston and the end of Route 20!