Flatland

I spent most of the day driving through Illinois, stopping in Rochelle for the night. When I'm away for a while, I always forget how flat the land is in the midwest - you feel like you can see forever.

I also forget how long Illinois & Indiana are. I thought yesterday I would go through St. Louis today, but I clearly didn't look at the route closely enough. Instead I spent several hours wondering why it was taking me so long to get there. By the time I finally realized the GPS was taking me all the way up Illinois instead, I was already much further north than I expected.

I did make a small detour that turned out to be a bit of a bust. The was a sign on the highway promoting the Centralia Balloon Festival. "Hot air balloons!" I thought, and quickly took the exit. Unfortunately, when I got there, I found a distressing and rather surprising lack of balloons at the Balloon Festival. None, in fact. Apparently, Sundays are devoted to vintage Corvette displays and homemade boat races. Which were perfectly nice - don't get me wrong. It's just that when you veer off the highway with multi-colored visions of graceful magic floating through your head, and end up with nothing but cardboard canoes - well, it tends to be a bit disappointing.


On tomorrow's agenda: lunch in Minneapolis, and spend the night in Fargo, or as close as I can come.