Day 5 - A slow start

So we started out the day 15 minutes from South Bend at the great KOA campground Kyle mentioned. We arrived at Notre Dame's campus around 8:15 AM and just drove around finding great places to take pictures, namely in front of the stadium, Touchdown Jesus, and the Golden Dome. With Dave behind the wheel, we left the campus with over 1000 miles of driving for the next 2 days. We had to traverse through some slow residential neighborhoods to make it to the highway, and on the way through we heard a shotgun go off. It sounded like it was right next to the RV. We stopped to see what happened, and found out that the outside rear tire on the driver's side essentially blew up. Luckily there are two rear tires on each side. After waiting 1.5 hours for a tow truck (that never came), I decided that I'd rather just drive to a shop and have them fix it. So off we went, riding on 5 tires, towards Zollman's Tire, 7 miles away. After less than 1 mile, someone else fired off a shotgun right next to our RV. Turns out Notre Dame isn't a shotgun wielding town, but rather we were down to 4 functional tires, and 6 miles to Zollman's. Driving really slowly, we finally made it, and had them replace all 4 of the rear tires. They got it done in like 30 minutes! So after eating lunch, getting gas and groceries, we finally got on the road around 1:30 PM. A very late start considering we wanted to drive about 10 hours each of the next 2 days.

Being on the road was uneventful until we rolled into Chicago around 2:30 or 3 PM. We hit terrible traffic, and didn't get out until like 4:30. But we weren't going let a little traffic slow us down. It was cloudy and a little drizzly outside of Chicago, but it started to clear up when we went North into Wisconsin (traveling on I-90). We stopped to get gas, and Kyle was next for driving. Dave and I went into the convenience store and found some great deals on booze. Unknowingly to us, they sell liquor at the gas station, and at great deals. We got a 5th of Jager for $20, and a Liter of Cuervo for $20. After Kyle started driving, the sky looked really dark ahead. The road then turned white with rain, and trees were blowing horizontal. The wipers worked great, and Kyle got us through safely.

Kyle drove for a good 6-7 hours until around 10PM (about 350 miles). I filled the RV up with more oil (she's taken 6 quarts so far on this trip...not exactly normal, but she's still running), and cleaned all the bugs off of our "Panoramic" windshield. When lifting the passenger wiper up to clean, one of the arms cracked. It doesn't seem very fixable, so hopefully we don't hit any more bad weather, or I might just take off the whole passenger wiper (and give only the driver a good view). So we left the travel center in Dexter, MN around 10:50 PM. I drove through more of Minnesota, and was able to watch the Moon set in front of me during my drive. After that I started getting tired, and pulled over to a Rest Area next to Jackson, MN at 1:00 AM. We had driven a total of 577 miles, from 1:30 PM EDT to 1:00 AM CDT. Dave and Kyle were already asleep, and I tuckered in for what I hoped would be a great night's sleep. I underestimated Dave's ability to wake up early though...

See all of our pictures here: Pictures
See a map of our progress here: Map
Miles Traveled on 6 wheels: 571
Miles Traveled on 4 wheels: 6
States Traveled: IN, IL, WI, MN
Time Zones Crossed: 1
Breakdowns: 1