Summer 2011

Yesterday's relatively benign trip turned into a more interesting trip today. The normal wind from the west which we enjoyed for the past several days decided to switch direction and varied from head on to broadside. When you are pushing a big surface, like our trailer, into that kind of a wind or getting gusts from the side you really have slow down or face the possibility of losing control of the vehicle. To make things more interesting, we had to go through several heavy rain showers during this portion of the trip. The head winds also causes an increase in fuel consumption which caused us to make an additional fuel stop.

Just past the midpoint of the trip, the sun started to come out and the wind subsided making driving a bit more pleasant and allowing us to make up some of the lost time. Despite the wind slow down and quite a number of construction sites, some miles long, we arrived at the Hickory Hollow Campground in North Utica, IL only about 30 minutes later than expected. Still a relatively easy trip.

A word about road construction... I don't believe we had a single driving day where we did not drive through one or more road construction projects. Some of these projects exceeded 10 miles in length and involved forcing traffic into single lane in each direction for the length of the project. It is not unusual to find many large road projects during the summer, but there seemed to be more of them than in past summers. If you are driving along the Interstates this summer, expect delays.