Day 12 -- Catskills Road Trip -- Warren Dunes IN to Minneapolis

September 17, 2018. Woke up at 7:47am and had the camp packed up and left the campsite at 8:09am. Went to the shower house for my morning ablutions and then to steal some electricity and make my tea at a nearby unoccupied campsite. Went to the beach/dunes, took a short trail walk then went to breakfast at Lydia's where the food was fine but the service was terrible. I was ignored. Should I do a Yelp review? Or move on?

I moved on. Drove down the shore a bit more and went to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore and stopped at the NPS visitor center and got my NPS passport stamped and had a good chat with the NPS volunteer about where to go next and make sure I look at the 5 large artworks and gardens outside! The artwork was giant spray painted art of the local native species. Each took the artist on average 2.5 hours to create and they all have hidden Mickey Mouse ears because the artist's daughters love Mickey/Disney. It takes me 2.5 hours to paint something awful that I have to paint over again.

Next, onto the Century of Progress Homes that had been moved to the park and decided the Florida House and the Cypress House were my favorites even though they were opposites of each other. One for me when I'm in my city mood of clean and uncluttered and the other for the me when I'm in the woods mood. I visited the next historic site of the original house of the first European who settled in the area and had a fur trading business. Lots of driving around in circles for me as I was a bit disoriented.

All of this extra looking (and geocaching for virtuals) put me off schedule by about 2 hours so I headed back on the road and got through Chicago. Traffic wasn't that bad and I thank my uncle Tom again for the IPass so I can zip through the toll stops.

I must say, Chicago drivers are not so awful as Minneapolis drivers. Yes, there are more of them but they seemed so much more orderly and do zipper merges and regular merges. Maybe it's because people have to pay to be on the road? I don't know. When I got to Madison the drivers were horrible, then okay through Wisconsin and then in Minneapolis insanity and rudeness seemed to be the norm.

I stopped in Beloit and looked at an old water tower that had fallen sort of apart. Just because it was there and I can't drive and drive and drive. It's so borrrrrring on the interstates and tollways.

Between Portage and Mauston is the Man Mound -- an Indian burial mound shaped like a man-person but a road had been built through his legs at some point so he was kind of amputated. But his legs were drawn on the road pavement and his feet in the cow pasture had been fenced off so the cows wouldn't desecrate the mound. Photo credit: https://www.co.sauk.wi.us/parksandrecreation/man-mound-park. Man Mound Park was one of 10 new historic national sites designated in 2016.

Too late to get cheese in Mauston; they closed at 6pm. I ate crap most of the day. I noticed the weather was changing--darker skies, wind pushing my little car around, and that the truckers were pulling off at the exits. Hmmm, I guess I'd better quit listening to my book and pay attention! Pulled off and ate some more crap. Then got back on to finish the trip and go home. I hadn't been fired from my job and had to go back to real life. My car turned 100,000 miles east of Menomonie. Total miles driven on this trip was 2875 miles.