6/25/17 New York to Illinois

What a long, long day!  We had a fairly uneventful drive in the morning, but when we hit Indiana after lunch, we hit mile after mile of narrowed highway due to construction - not that they were working on a Sunday, but the Jersey barriers were up.  We were running low on gas and the next service area was closed.  We drove on and when we were extremely low, we finally spotted an exit.  Even though the signs did not indicate that there was gas at this exit, we got off anyway.  Our thinking was that if we had to call AAA for gas, I would rather wait on a country road than on the side of the highway in the middle of gridlock.  We got off and turned toward the nearest town which fortunately was only 4 miles away.  We made it to the gas station and when we filled up, we noticed that we took 20.5 gallons - the truck has a 21 gallon tank!  Yikes!  That was way closer than we have come since we were in college and we were dirt poor.  We took a different route from the gas station and wound up skirting around I-90, but we still ran into construction and traffic.  What a mess!  Then the biggie!!!  Chicago, on a Sunday no less, was bumper to bumper!  We wended our way across the city, past the White Sox stadium and Sears tower, and slowly and painfully came out on the other side.  Dave has sworn that he will NEVER drive through Chicago again.  When we came through in 1985 with our kids, it was 2 in the morning and we were the only car on the road loaded with trucks.  We are in Elgin for the night and hopefully tomorrow we will be going in the opposite direction of the majority of the traffic!  We opted to walk to a restaurant about a half mile from the hotel - it felt good to stretch our legs.  The girls were great - many alphabet games, finished Hatchet, and another movie: Ella Enchanted, along with checking out license plates.  The most exciting thing for them seemed to be that we had breakfast in NY, lunch in OH, and dinner in IL!  Unfortunately, we got in too late for them to go to the pool, but hopefully tomorrow we will get to our destination earlier.  The girls have just finished writing in their journals and it is time for me to read another chapter of Caddie Woodlawn, so I will stop here.