2026--Day 9

The long journey home begins today.  The weather isn't 'cooperating,' with no severe weather that we can get to easily within the next couple of days.  So the plan is to leave Peoria with a brief stop at Indiana Dunes State Park. 

Before that, one of the kids wanted to stop at a restaurant in Gary, IN.  That didn't go according to plan.  The home of the Jackson 5 (with signs pointing you to the actual house) was not what you would consider pleasant.  It had a bit of an East Saint Louis vibe without the charm.  After a brief search for this chicken joint (which we could not find, BTW), we abandoned all hope and fled.  We noticed that several of the stop lights weren't functioning; that could have been a consequence of the weather on Thursday, or it could simply be urban blight.  Either way, we weren't hanging around to investigate.  Even the more famous chicken joint was abandoned. 

The kids had a great but short time at the beach in Indiana Dunes State Park (aside from the one who was dive-bombed by a seagull, I assume), and now we're heading for Ohio.  While driving along the Indiana Toll Road, I kept seeing signs along the highway saying 'Emergency Parking: 2 Hours."  Be sure to keep your breakdowns efficient. 

This is as close to Chicago as we wanted to get:

While getting gas at a rest area on Ohio Turnpike (sorry, THE Ohio Turnpike), a couple of vans carrying groups of young tourists decided to have an escapade; evidently they'd never seen gas pumps before.  I think they were from Wisconsin, which might explain things.

Finally pulled into Elyria around 11, and had dinner at a well-known 24-7 restaurant, where the server was able to get 12 different orders to her customers correctly without writing a single thing down.

Crawled into bed shortly before 1.  It's going to be an early rollout this morning, as we want to get home in the early afternoon.  Cheryl, if you're reading this, I'm so sorry I couldn't visit.  Final tally: 462 miles (4,539 total).  Until tomorrow...