Carol & Warner's Trip Around The USA: Rochester,Minnesota to Dearborn, Michigan 6.11.2011

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Rochester, Minnesota to Dearborn, Michigan

The odometer reads 82,318 miles. The temperature is 57 degrees at 7.58 am as we leave Rochester for Dearborn, Michigan.

The sky is gray – no rain. This will be a day of crossing state borders as we pass through Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana (very briefly), and into Michigan. The landscape will change markedly from farmland to suburbia. Rather rolling through Big Sky country dotted farms we will be surrounded by an urban landscape for we approach and pass Chicago. We will drive by communities whose names are familiar - Chicago, Ann Arbor, and Battle Creek – and never see one of them! Slowly the prairie lands have disappeared and mature trees that block our view of the countryside border the highways.

We have lunch in a “traveler’s oasis” suspended over I-90 west of Chicago and buy gas for $3.99 per gallon.

Somewhere along the way, we entered the Eastern Time Zone. Finally, my watch is correct again.

Passing Chicago, we come again to an agricultural landscape with a mixture of wooded areas and farmland. The farms are not as widely scattered as they were in Minnesota and all have large silos suggesting cows are more important than wheat.

We arrive at the Comfort Inn in Taylor, MI (a suburb of Dearborn/Detroit) soon after 7pm. The temperature is 81 degrees. A very long day but we are officially “back east” – well almost.

Tomorrow will be a special day, one we have anticipated for some time.