All In a 9 Hour Day AKA Seen Along the Way

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Today Fisherhubby and I made a 7 and a half hour trip in 9 hours.

Yes, we are just "good" like that, able to take twice as long to do something as normal people would need.

This is a pictorial saga of our day.  Come along and ride with us.
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First things first.

Before anything else went in the luggage hatch, Fisherhubby made SURE his fishing gear was stowed away.

Can you imagine how I LOVE riding along with fishing poles poking me in the ear?   Well, imagine away.

Anywhere we go, the fishing gear goes with us.  This trip he's MAYBE going to use it for most of Friday when he fishes with his buddy Mark.  Of course Mark also has TONS of fishing gear, but I guess SHARING that gear simply isn't "done" by REAL fishermen, so this stuff goes with us wherever we go.
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Fortunately Fisherhubby DID save room for "less" important things - - - like our luggage.

By 7:30 this morning we were off and running.  

AND, after circling back home once to get the back pack FH forgot (yes, on top of all that OTHER gear he simply HAD to have his back pack too) and one stop at the ATM we were on the road again..
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About an hour from home we stopped at a Micky-D's for some breakfast and coffee in this quaint and cute little berg.

I must here confess that I took a little extra time talking to some locals (who me???  TALK??) and getting closer to that awesome Lutheran church in the background to snap a closer-up of it.

In retrospect - - - I MAY have saved us 10 minutes or so of a long grueling day had I curbed my tongue and spared my camera clicking finger.
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A few minutes later I snapped this photo of the "adult male maximum security prison" in Portage, Wisconsin on the fly-by.

It's a very interesting, even pretty, place to have housed some horrific criminals not the LEAST of which was Jeffrey Dahmer.

A little later in the trip, this prison spurred a "google and discuss" session of Wisconsin Serial Killers - - - and we have some doozies, folks.  At Halloween we have no need of fictitious ghosts stories, we have had some real live ghouls of our own.  

GB, also known on this blog as Fisherhubby, has a morbid fascination with the subject.  Today our "investigations" covered:

Ed Gein
Jeffrey Dahmer
David Spanbaur

If you don't know about these men, google away if you've the stomach for it.
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Next we hustled past Madison, our state Capitol - - - and I do mean we hustled.

I was hoping to capture the Capitol dome on the skyline, but for some odd reason Fisherhubby frowned on the idea of slowing down in the Mad Town traffic on I-90, I know not why.  ;-)

Needless to say, because of our haste, the dome slipped behind something in every shot I attempted.

So - - - just imagine it back there on the skyline, will ya??
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About that time Fisherhubby needed a "pause that refreshes." 

I TRIED  to talk him into waiting until the Belvidere Plaza (where we had to stop to switch drivers so I would drive through Chicago) and thereby save one stop - - - really I did - - - but alas and alack, his eyeballs were floatin' from the coffee he'd been drinking.

This stop also probably added another unnecessary 10 minutes to our trip.

Let me clarify - - - unnecessary to those of us whose eyeballs could go another hour or so before they floated. 
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Upon leaving the rest stop, I espied this formerly famous I-90 landmark.

The orange pumpkin now lying on the ground like a fractured Humpty Dumpty used to adorn the silo for years and years.

However, when two successive storms turned it into a "smashing pumpkin" the owners stopped repairing it.

I miss that pumpkin!!
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As we traveled along I marveled at the beauty of the morning sun shining on the now quickly greening Wisconsin landscape.

This was not the prettiest vista through which we traversed, but it is the one I captured.
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And then, just like that, we were in Illinois - - - the land of Lincoln, toll roads, and
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Highway construction.

I snapped this photo from the window of the Belvidere Plaza, looking down at the portion of I-90 we had just traversed.  I thought at the time how "lucky" we were that the traffic hadn't been backed up by that roadwork.

I thought too soon.
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As luck, or fate, would have it we pulled into the Belvidere Plaza just as these two buses were discharging their loads of "age challenged" folks for a wee bathroom break.

I rushed into the plaza and all the way to the other end where there were no long Ladies' Room lines.

Then, by some freak accident (like I was probably looking down at my phone texting) I saw FH go INTO the Men's Room, but not come out.

I sat and texted away happily for perhaps 10 more wasted minutes before I realized I had missed him and he was back in the car waiting for me.

Sigh.  30 minutes of our trip already wasted in a wanton manner and the worst was yet to come.
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No sooner did I take over the driving duties than the Illinois scenery began to look like this.   Road construction on our right, traffic before, traffic to the left, and
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Traffic behind.

All of it STOPPED.

Let us digress a moment:  
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Is it really  necessary to have a "slow" traffic sign flag lady in the median when traffic is at a dead standstill???

DEAD STANDSTILL???

Don't you worry about me being unsafe snapping away with my camera in all that traffic.

DEAD STANDSTILL.  

Not too dangerous to snap photos from a DEAD STANDSTILL.

And this is where the OTHER hour was wasted on our trip.  That's how long it took us to go 10 or 15 miles until we came to the place where they had narrowed ALL the traffic down to one skinny lane.

Really????

Chicago traffic down to one lane?  What were they thinkin'???   Oh yah, THEY WEREN'T!!!

Fortunately once we got through the block or two of SINGLE LANE traffic, things picked right up - - -
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And before we knew it we were in Indiana and making one last stop at this oasis for a potty break and to get a little petrol, as the Brits might say.

With nary another pause or delay we were off and running on the last leg of our trip, arriving in our former home town of Marion by 5:30 Indiana time.

What we will do with the rest of our time in Indiana may (or may not) be the subject of subsequent blog posts.

Although I really think there will be more posts, 'cause why would I want to waste all this good bloggy fodder?

And now, my head really needs to hit the pillow.

If only I'll be able to sleep as well as the snores coming from FH indicate that HE is sleeping - - - what with his snores and the sounds of many baseball players feet, which said baseball players are sharing this hotel with us tonight afore they play in a tourney tomorrow - - - it is NOT a sure thing that I will, be able to sleep the deep sleep of a snorer.

TTFN