Alaska 2008

I had hoped to start this day's comments with a quote from the Supremes, "No wind... no rain." We got half of it right. We didn't have the wind, but we did get a thunderstorm and accompanying downpour as we were going through Madison, WI. Other than a few other showers, the weather was cooperative.

The route from St Cloud takes us around Minneapolis - St Paul, unfortunately during the morning rush. Once we got past the rush hour traffic, we did have one construction area in the Minneapolis area that slowed us a bit. Once past Minneapolis beltway (I-694), we crossed into Wisconsin. The first part of the journey in Wisconsin was through rolling hills until we got past Madison where the terrain leveled off a bit. I-94 has a number of construction sites through Wisconsin, but only one slowed us down because of one lane traffic. Not long after crossing into Illinois we hit another major construction site where the reduced speed limit and narrow temporary lanes caused us some delay. Once past Rockford, the road opened up until we got off the highway 20 miles further east.

With the heat and humidity we are now encountering, it almost makes us want to be back in the cold and rainy weather we had left a week and half ago... not really. As I write this at 5 PM, the temperature is 85° and the humidity is 67%. The combination makes it feel as if it 93°. We have yet to use the air conditioner, preferring to have some fresh air in the trailer. However, if it continues to feel like this when we go to sleep, the air conditioner will be turned on for the first time since Rapid City, SD, six weeks ago. On the other hand, we have had to use heat almost every day since then and burned through more than 90 lbs of propane. The local forecast for tonight calls for scattered strong thunderstorms. If that forecast turns out to be valid, I will almost guarantee that we will use the air conditioner. I guess the weather we are getting now is warming us up (pardon the pun) for New York. We will be slowly acclimating to heat and humidity over the next few days so that our arrival home will not be a shock to our system.