Day 7- traveling to Jackson, MN

Happy boy in the AC (early on in the day)

At 8:30 this morning it was already 85 degrees in Chicago.  It took no time for the kids to vote on leaving Chicago and spending the day driving in the AC! We, on the other hand, were disappointed to be leaving the city so soon.  Afterall, I had to cancel my lunch date with Oprah and Len had to give away his box tickets that he had for the game at Wrigley. Oh well, at least on the boat tour we got to see the "high end" fitness club where Oprah and Dr. Oz work out together! Len and I have already decided we'll go back by ourselves some day.

Douglas's photo of the storm we drove through.

Let me just start this next part of the story by saying we still have our kids with us and we have decided that we do still want to continue this trip. However, it took a bit to get to this point.  The good news is it took us until day 7 to have a rough day.  The bad news is it was not one of our stellar parenting days.  The fighting, teasing, potty language, gangsta talk, obsession with electronics got to Len and me.  About 6.5 hours into an 8 hour drive we pulled the car over and shared a few choice thoughts and words with the boys.  The last 1.5 hours of driving were delightfully quiet and all was forgotten by the time we pulled into the campground.  Amazingly, the boys were extremely helpful in setting up camp. :-) The swim in the pool once our camp was set up may have been a motivator (not to mention my parenting meltdown!)

Look closely for the windmills!

This morning we drove right into a huge thunderstorm.  It was quite different than anything we had experienced before.  We could see it coming from miles away.  Douglas tried to take a picture of the clouds.  The clouds were so dark and ominous that the kids both put down their ipods and watched the storm.  At one point we fielded questions of tornadoes and water spouts.  For the rest of the day we drove and drove and drove through acres and acres of farmland.  Finally, Douglas asked,       "How much corn does this earth really need anyways?" Like I said, there is a real learning curve going on  about just how large this world is! There is a huge use of wind power out here.  One of the pictures we are including is of a farm surrounded by windmills as far as we could see.  The day was pretty hazy so the photo wasn't as clear as we had hoped!

All set up and finishing dinner!

According to our original plan, we would have been spending another night in Chicago. Tomorrow we would have driven to Rochester, MN.  So, we are now one full day and a few hours ahead of our plan. We are at a KOA campground right off the highway (in the middle of cornfields) in Jackson, MN. We have a nice grassy site with electricity. The farmers are still in the fields and we can hear the tractors rather loudly.  I'm hoping he doesn't try to pull and all nighter!  Tomorrow we'll take it slow packing up.  Check out time is 11:00 and we'll head west again on I-90 towards Mitchell, SD and The Corn Palace!  Then we'll head toward the Badlands.  We have no reservations so we don't need to be anywhere in particular. Stay tuned....