Day 2 - Midwest into North Country

Outside Thunder Bay Grill, Rockford, Ill.

Ohio is ironed-out smooth, so flat it makes the Eastern Shore look hilly.  The glacial sheet that came as far south as Virginia 10,000 years ago did a very fine scouring job.  The fields are flooded and full of browned corn stubble.  Nothing has greened yet. The only color is the red barns beside a clump of trees and a farmstead.  All else is wet and grey. There are farms every 50 acres or so, with names like Hoffman, Schade and Schaefer.  But surely corporate farming has taken over their land now.  

Back on the rainy road, the highway stretches out before me.  I am surprised how little traffic. Mostly it is trucks, few cars. The rest stops are echoing halls or emptiness. Rolling hills in Indiana, rivers breaking their banks, worn-out road pavement. Elkhart, Indiana, must be the RV manufacturing capital of the world, I see identical models by the dozens lined up outside warehouse buildings.  Rusting steel mills and the stink of iron smelting goes from Gary all the way to southside Chicago.  Clouds truncate the Chicago towers and traffic clogs the expressway, as usual.  

On to Rockford, Illinois. Rain persists and the radar shows snow ahead in Wisconsin.  Time to stop, walk a very patient Eiger, play with him in the rain and hunker down until the storm passes. Snowing outside my window at the Holiday Inn, moose statue outside the restaurant and moose antlers over the door. I'm heading northward.