Saturday, July 15th

Hello all, I’ve been catching up on postings, and will continue to do so. This entry is for day ten of the journey, being day 15 of July, 2006. Today I woke up in a campground in Wisconsin. Wisconsin. There haven’t been many days in my life where I thought, “Gee, I’d like to wake up in Wisconsin,” but today it happened. It wasn’t a particularly big deal. Just... different. You see, I had set my phone’s alarm the night before that night, but turned it off that night. So, when I woke up quite early in Wisconsin, it was a little weird. My phone was off, but my alarm was on. I turned that off when it woke me up in Wisconsin, and promptly fell back asleep, that is until I woke up. After that I took a shower, got dressed, and organized my truck. After that I marked my previous day’s progress on my maps. Then downloaded my previous day’s pictures and sorted them. Then I left the campground. The day was largely boring, but there were a few things of interest. One of which was lettered highways. As far as I know, where I come from we don’t have much in the way of lettered highways, so I though Highway I was kind of interesting. Which was followed shortly by the intersection with Highway V. Interesting, interesting... Another day and the most interesting things I was seeing were road signs... I thought this one was kind of interesting in a Mississippi kind of way. I always thought that Mississippi was kind of an interesting word in how rhythmic it was. This word seems pretty rhythmic too: I drove through Madison, and was surprised by how small it was. It seems as though the trend for state capitals is to be on the smaller side of that state’s major cities. Somehow and for some reason, I chose to continue east on the I-94. I ended up driving through Milwaukee. It was pretty unimpressive as far as major cities go. I took a picture of whatever the name of the field that the Brewers play at is: Then I drove into the heart of Milwaukee’s Interstate construction jungle: And I saw a neat brick building: And caught my first glimpse of a great lake: After that, I needed to get gas, so I stopped in... I’ll call it the industrial part of town. It was a BP, I believe. The first thing I did was ask about traveler’s checks. I was told “No,” by the man behind the bullet-proof glass. So, I paid with cash, got my gas, then my change, and on my way out, I caught sight of this photo opportunity: Yep, that’s right. The convenience store that would not accept traveler’s checks proclaims to the world that it accepts food stamps. How interesting After that I got back on the Interstate and headed south. I’d seen some signs for Wisconsin cheese, but by far the most interesting was this: I didn’t stop, but it advertises the ‘Mars Cheese Castle.’ That sounds pretty intriguing to me. I stopped at a park on the Lake in Kenosha, took in some sights, and then continued on to the Illinois State Beach Park. I think that was its name, anyway. It proved... elusive. I found out that there were actually two parts two it, after having searched the first part of it I found very, very thoroughly. While there, I saw some interesting sights. A group of teenagers on a dock out in the water, climbing up on it, and jumping off of it: And then there was the wedding group. There was apparently a wedding that took place somewhere else and was bused into the park for the photo op. Then I went down to the water, stuck my hand in it, just to say that I’ve touched one of the Great Lakes, then I took a rock, and then I took my picture. Finally, I left there and went on to the second, campinger half of the park. I got myself a campsite, and after exploring the area pretty thoroughly, returned to my campsite and realized I had a visitor. Shortly after that it got dark and I went to sleep. My plan was to begin the route the next day.