Lightning and thunder and rain....OH MY!

We left Kimmell House Inn around 11am Thursday morning and headed out US 6 to Indiana 35 south to Indiana 30 west all the way to I-80 and Joliet, IL...at 148 miles a little more distance than we normally travel.  That's the short version....lol!  If that's all the excitement you need today you can stop reading and ignore the rest!

Yep, we are in Amish country!

Actually, the long version is not much more exciting.  The first 118 miles was a cake walk....the secondary roads we drove were very pleasant until we hit Chicago Heights, which appeared to be a very seedy town....and then the road got narrow, and rough for about 5 miles....that ended up being the least of my worries......then the mind numbing 20 mile construction zone started.  If we had stopped after 118 miles it would have been a very easy day.....25 of the last 30 miles taxed my nerves and concentration to their limits.  The construction zone involved 1 lane each way with K rails on each side and maybe  1 1/2 feet to spare on each side for me.  To add to the difficulty factor the road was rough, and often off camber....very difficult to keep the Newell in the middle of that narrow lane.  When we hit I-80 I could feel my blood pressure lowering....only 5 miles to the Cracker Barrel where we would spend the night....but wait, there's more......the last 4 miles was another construction zone.

Cool barn

This is where it gets a little more exciting, or maybe interesting....you be the judge.  Around 8pm it started raining pretty hard....so hard we lost our satellite signal for about 5 minutes....that is what I call a thick cloud cover!  Then the lightning and thunder followed, and continued virtually all night long.  You could hear the thunder just rippling all around us hour after hour.  Fortunately, where we were parked in the Cracker Barrel parking lot had very good drainage, and, of course, we were quite snug in the Newell.  I don't know if I have ever been in an electrical storm that lasted that long.  A couple of bolts seemed quite close.


Tomorrow we will eat breakfast at the Cracker Barrel, and "pay the rent" as I say....it is time to fill the diesel tank....it will probably take around 130 gallons to "top off" the tank....lol!


Thanks for stopping by!