Chicago to Pennsylvania

We left Chicago just before the rains set in. Kathryn sent us off after a great breakfast of homemade blueberry pancakes! The kids spent time playing together and enjoying their new-found cousins (Hawley, Franny and Lenore).

Hawley and Sarah compared DS games. And we all had an opportunity to additionally enjoy their hospitality with good hot showers. Kathryn’s little girls had a great time playing with the teen girls, and got a kick out of exploring our partially closed trailer. All too soon, we had to bid our goodbyes and be off. It was so good to spend even that little bit of time with them.


We set off and headed south on I-294 to I-80 out of Chicago and encountered our first toll roads of the trip. The toll roads took us through Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. Funny, I never saw hide nor hair of a toll road out west. Go figure. I was perusing the maps and state guides, trying to find points of interest to visit while we were trekking to Pennsylvania. We hoped to get to Pennsylvania either late that night or early the next morning to sojourn a while with our good friend Mike (who had left his house in Boulder to go to his farm in PA). While going through Indiana’s state guide, I came across the RV hall of fame. Hey, how could we drive three quarters of the way across country hauling an RV behind us without stopping to see the place that exalted these vehicles! And to top it off, it was so close to the interstate we were traveling on (I-80), we could see if from the road. When I called to ask about hours, the woman on the line assumed that we were either driving or towing an RV. Ha ha. Actually, the place was pretty cool. There were several galleries – the first one was a showcase for new RVs. Apparently the RV companies drew numbers to see who got to display their particular unit, and 5 different types of RVs were represented. Folding travel trailers (pop-ups like ours), regular travel trailers (towed behind vehicle), fifth wheels (one end is attached into the bed of a pickup truck), class C motorhomes (like the classic Winnebagos) and Class A motorhomes (like huge buses). They were fun to explore, and the kids (and we) enjoyed trying out the seats and the beds, and finding all the fun hidden compartments. The kids decided immediately they wanted to trade in the small pop-up for one of the class A motorhomes. I told them sure, no problem, if they could come up with another $100K. We checked out all the fun stuff, and the kids took a family portrait (bears!).

The next gallery had displays of vintage trailers – one of the earliest was pulled by a model-T Ford. The best part about this section is that we were actually able to go inside most of these vintage campers. It was interesting that the concept of a potty in the camper didn’t come into vogue until sometime during the 1960s. We checked out trailers from the 20s through the 70s, from tiny teardrop units to massive buses.






We continued on our way in the rain through Ohio and finally made it into Pennsylvania. The landscape had slowly been going from flat to rolling hills as we progressed farther east. Now we were actually heading into mountains again. The weather was still slightly rainy, and the PA mountains were enveloped in fog. These hills were not nearly as tall as the ones we had recently seen in Colorado, but they certainly were beautiful. We got off the interstate and started winding our way through mountain passes to get to the valley where Mike lived – Penn Valley, just outside State College. Traffic slowed down, mainly due to the slower pace of the Amish buggies that abounded in the area, as well as certain obstacles like flocks of geese in the middle of the road.



After a few wrong turns - which we didn’t mind at all since we enjoyed looking at the countryside – we came to Mike’s farm. His family’s got a great piece of property with two old farmhouses and several acres of land. It was so peaceful to sit on his porch and pass the time and watch the woodpeckers and hummingbirds at the feeders. I could have stayed there for a whole week! And the kids were happy too, because satellite TV had just been installed that week. Mike, however, hadn’t set it up yet and didn’t know how it worked, but we had 4 tech-savvy kids in the house so you know they figured it out in no time at all! We spent several wonderful days with Mike before heading on to the last leg of our journey home.