We still weren’t sure exactly what we were going to do this day, but we weren’t in a huge rush. So, when we got up, we went for a hike, climbing to the top of a sand dune called Mt. Pisgah. The trailhead was in the campground and it made for a very nice morning hike:
From the campground, we headed south, around Lake Michigan. As lunchtime neared, we were headed into a town called Benton Harbor. Debi looked for a restaurant on the way and found Charlie’s Piggin’ and Grinnin’. With a name like that, you have to eat there. So, we stopped.
It was good (not amazing). We also got gelato at a place nearby, that was also good. Perhaps even more interesting was the racial divide in the town. We stopped for gas in Benton Harber, on the northern side of town, and almost everyone was black. But once we crossed the river that ran through the middle of the town, almost everyone was white. Race still matters in the US!
We continued around the lake and then crossed into Indiana and then Illinois, heading toward Algonquin, IL, where Debi’s brother and sister-in-law live with their three kids. We stopped by their house and spent the evening with them. They were very gracious in offering to let us spend the night, but we had another idea: why not drive through the night, taking advantage of Toren sleeping? Between Chicago and Utah we didn’t have anything else we wanted to see and figured we could just push to Utah to spend a few days there relaxing. So, we left their house around 8:30 once their kids were asleep and started driving. Thus began the long drive west…
daily mileage: 1,573; total mileage: 5,128
states visited: Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah; total state count: 22 (plus 1 district and 1 other country)
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