Day 8
I got up at 7am, went downstairs and got a couple coffees, picked up a couple coffee packets from the front desk, and went to work on Day 4, 5 and 6 of the blogs. Shar snoozed until 8:30am or so and we went down to breakfast. It was the standard hotel breakfast with sausage patties, eggs, potatoes, and the assorted other choices you usually get. We were filled up nicely, showered, and on our way back to Highway 20 by 10:00. We skirted the edge of Chicago. We crossed Calumet River and were quickly into Indiana, snapping a picture as we went of the welcome sign. The worn out neighborhoods of East Chicago and Gary, with their boarded up houses and graffiti, turned into apartments, which turned into suburbs, and we went up and over a large hill. Before us stretched familiar cornfields. 
Indiana passed without much ado, and we were cruising through small towns again. On the map it looks close to Lake Michigan, as if we were following the coastline, but I don’t recall ever seeing water. We turned east and inadvertently went around South Bend on an alternate 20 route. Shar found us a campground near Milan (pronounced “myLen) and we ate up the miles. 
In Ohio we passed an Amish community and got some pictures of the horse and buggies clopping down the side of the road. At the one gas station we used in Indiana, they had a special area for “Buggy Parking”.
We pulled into the campground at around 8:00pm and found the office empty of Denice, one of the hosts. She was trying to get the power back on to sections of the park and had been on the phone with the power company who were being obstinate. She quickly checked us in and we had the entire tent area of the park to ourselves. 
Milan Travel Park is the opposite of what my parents would have liked. We were in sight of the freeway and its noise, right next to the train tracks and its noise every four hours or so, and the bright parking lot lights from the nearby Motel 6 clearly illuminated our section of the travel park. The biting bugs were gloriously absent, though the fireflies danced for us. Since the ground was level we decided to give the tent a try for the first time, and found that it worked well. The air mattress fit in the tent nicely, and the openness of the tent gave great airflow. We had to adjust the air pressure in the mattress once, having gotten used to it being blown up only to three quarters full. It being made fully inflated felt too solid. The wind cooled the night, though it smelled of trucker smoke at times, and we drifted off to sleep in the clarion of noice. Every four hours or so the train would wake me up, but otherwise the massive amounts of noice just kinda blended into “white noise” with it continuousness.
Miles Driven: 338
City/Towns Passed:
Temperature at 10:00am: 84
Day 9
We had learned to set an alarm by that point in the trip, passing through three times zones makes waking up at a “normal time” closer to 9:00am or 10:00am vs 7:00am. I cooked up the last of the turkey sausage and oatmeal while Shar broke up camp. After breakfast she went to take a shower while I finished dishes and packing. By 9:00 we were heading to the birthplace of the great Thomas Edison in Milan! This being a Monday the office and house were closed, but we walked the grounds and read the signs before heading back towards Highway 20. 
I will admit that I was getting a little road weary at this point in the trip. Long days in the saddle, no really points of interest, and “jet lag” of time zone changes were taking a toll. A nice stop at a park to soak my feet in Lake Erie helped, but the three hours of grinding through Cleveland demolished that relaxed feeling. Knowing that we had another long drive to a campground in western New York, but had Buffalo and what felt like never-ending suburbs to negotiate started to make me cranky. I’ve been spoiled by the west and its wide, open, spaces. 
Survive I did though, and eventually the little towns on Highway 20 replaced the continuous city that dominates the shores of Lake Erie. The structure of counties and cities confused us until Shar looked it up online. We had been passing “Town of (Name)”, then it would be “Village of (Same Name)” and even just a variation a mile down the road of “Town/Village of East/South (Same Name). It was also common to see “(Same Name) Center” as well. Turns out the Town, Village, and the rare Hamlet designation has to do with the type of municipal government the area has chosen to use. I also think that the requirements to be a Town, Village, or Hamlet seem to be a lot looser than they are in Oregon. You can hardly go 3 miles before you pass a town sign and the three houses that only seem to be located there. I’ve decided to talk to my neighbors about forming the Village of Coquille.
We beat the fading light to Ontario County Park and found no-one to check in with. I had registered and payed for a spot online, so we found it and set up the tent again for the second night in a row. I tried to get a fire going, but the combination of a strong and steady wind, plus the high humidity proved to be an unsurmountable barrier to keeping paper going long enough to start the small bundle of dried leaves and sticks Shar and I had gathered. We ate our rehydrated Mexican rice, beans with chicken, and carrots, pear, and broccoli in the light of a flashlight, and Shar tried successfully pull me out of my “We’re never going to get to Boston.” funk. We crawled into the tent, watching fireflies dance and a couple shooting stars pass overhead. This campground was the opposite of where we had just been in Ohio: not a single manmade noise disturbed us. We had been greeted by a whitetail deer upon entering the park, and Shar had to rescue the tent before it blew away, but the peace was perfect. We had an AirBnB set up for the following night in Newton, MA, minutes from Boston, so I decided to shake off my blahs and catch my second wind.
Miles Driven: 311
City/Towns Passed:
Temperature at 10:00am: 84
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