Thursday, October 28

We left Terre Haute under gray skies. It was 45 degrees. The highway was lined with brown-leafed or bare-limbed trees and the wind was fierce. Snaking our way north towards I-90, we passed the 7,000 mile mark on the odometer. Our newest book-on-CD was Ivan Doig’s The Whistling Season. Although set in Montana, the prose fit our traveling conditions perfectly: “The wind was practicing for winter…the pewter sky….” We entered Illinois and miles of flat, flat farmland broken only by the occasional farmhouse surrounded by clumps of trees. A large sign along the highway proclaimed: Guns Save Life.

After checking long range weather outlooks for snow, Mark’s incurable wanderlust had ruled out taking the more southern I-80 to Salt Lake City since at that point we would encounter roads already traveled this trip--Horrors!

We rolled on into Wisconsin. My sister Teri had suggested a couple of interesting stops but we were bent on racking up some miles. We cruised by the rocky pinnacles and over the rolling hills near The Dells and continued on northwest towards Tomah (home to many of my step mom’s clansmen) and finally picked up I-90. Some 40 miles later, we crossed several miles of bridge over the mighty Mississippi River and entered Minnesota. A setting sun cast an orange glow on the riverside hills and bathed in eerie light fields of bright pumpkins left unpicked.

We arrived in Rochester in the dark. After an abortive attempt to find one campground, we called the KOA campground in town. The man told us that he could give us electricity but no water. The predicted temperature overnight was 22 degrees. With another call we discovered that a nearby Motel 6 would only be $10 more than the KOA. We quickly abandoned the camper!

26. Illinois--State sovereignty, national union/Land of Lincoln, Prairie State

27. Wisconsin--Forward/Badger State

28. Minnesota--The star of the North/North Star State, Land of 10,000 Lakes