Hot sun blazed through the jeep windows as we drove northward yesterday afternoon. Air conditioning is very touchy in that stinky jeep — the vents refuse to blow cool air if the vehicle goes faster than 59 miles per hour. To make things more complicated, I’m so worried about maintaining reasonable gas mileage that I refuse to roll down the windows on highways because of wind resistance. Needless to say, Katie and I were feeling sick, sticky, and sweaty when I pulled off into Kankakee to stretch my legs for a bit. What was meant to be a five minute pit stop problematically escalated into a ninety minute excursion themed “squander your entire day.”

Katie felt so sick that she had to stretch out in the T@b while I browsed through a few atlases in Wal-Mart, looking for a campground near Chicago. One hour of research using Katie’s iPhone revealed no usable results. Looking at that tiny iPhone screen for so long was giving me a headache, so I gave up.
Katie was sleeping off her aches in the parking lot. “Let’s go to a cafe in downtown Kankakee,” I said, “I know I can find a campground if I use my computer.” We ventured into the city only to find that all the internet cafes were already closed. “Surely the library will have free wireless,” I thought, foolishly. Katie picked up a signal in the parking lot, but the validation page said that we would have to wait 24 hours before the connection could be authenticated. “Fiddlesticks!”
It was getting late, so we pointed the jeep toward Chicago and got back on the road. Katie was still feeling nauseous, and another unfruitful hour of searching on her iPhone for campgrounds was not remedying her malady. We happened upon a Panera Bread, which is always a reliable wireless hotspot, and sat in the T@B using our computers. We couldn’t locate anything within sixty miles of Chicago, which is a completely unreasonable distance for a tourist. When a security guard pulled his truck next our T@B at 11:30pm and laid in on the horn, we figured it was time to give up and move on.
We drove to yet another Wal-Mart and, once again, set up camp in the parking lot. This Wal-Mart happened to be in a busy semi-urban area with people walking and driving through the parking lot all night long. I couldn’t fall asleep for hours, overcome by paranoid thoughts of someone bursting through the door with a machete to chop Mister’s head off. I spent a restless night peeking through the window blinds and cradling Mister’s head whenever I heard a noise.

In the morning we returned to Panera Bread to retry our search for a campground near Chicago. Five hours later, I settled for a place in Yorksville, Illinois, which is about an hour and 15 minutes from the city. As we were packing up to leave we met a brilliant, friendly man named Brian, who gave us some advice on how to entertain ourselves in Chicago.

We got to talking and Brian inspired us with his belief that most people, no matter what culture they come from, have a lot of things in common. Talking to him helped us to reclaim a sense of pride in our home country, and reminded us of the reasons we decided to take this road trip in the first place. Brian, if you’re reading, thanks for giving us a much needed boost of optimism.

We detoured from the trip to Yorksville to fill up on Taco Bell. Grandma’s cooking was dreadfully missed during those moments. There was no one to greet us at the campground, so we pulled into an open spot and I guess we’ll have to talk to someone in the morning. Mister got to meet another chihuahua named Nips, who had the same voice as Mister! One of them growled and I couldn’t tell for a minute which chihuahua that voice was coming from. It turned out to be Nips. Mister was all love and kisses.

Tags: Chicago, Illinois, Kankakee, T@B