I didn’t hear my alarm, so I woke up a little later than I wanted to at 5:25am instead of 5:10am. It worked out ok though since I was just making oatmeal. When I was about to get into the shower, Phoebe came in to potty, so I knew they were up early. I started the oatmeal at 6am. Ellen came down with a fever still. She didn’t eat very much of her oatmeal where she usually downs it all very quickly. I hadn’t made enough in my initial batch for everyone, so I made up a second pot to make sure that everyone would have some.
We were on the road by 7:26am, and I guess Mother Nature is a Cleveland Cavaliers fan because it just poured rain on us all throughout Ohio. It really slowed us down in several places due to poor visibility on the road. There were trucks where it didn’t seem like they had lights on, but when we got closer, they did have their tail lights on. The rain was just so dense we couldn’t see them. While we were driving, the car’s low tire pressure alert came on, so we got off at the next convenient exit to check. All my tires were at the same pressure, so we started again and the alert no longer showed...until a little while later when it came on again. It went out on it’s own later so I just ignored it. It didn’t come on again the rest of the day. The nice thing about the rain is that it gave the car a nice scrub. There are definitely fewer bugs on the front of the car now. We also started the 3rd book on the Harry Potter series, Prisoner of Azkaban, for the girls. This is the first time they’d heard it. It’s going to take a while to finish it since we don’t have any more long drives.
The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful, and the sun was shining. Through Indianapolis, there was a state trooper tail gating me. I was a little above the speed limit, but I was being passed, so I know it wasn’t for that. I assume it was just running my plates before going around me. Traffic was light through the main cities though. We crossed the Indiana border into Illinois and gained an hour so we arrived at 1:45pm CST. We met up with my friend Lynnell from back in my days working for the University of Illinois Campus Computing Services Organization (though now it’s called something else). She now works for the department I got my degree in which at the time was called General Engineering, but is now IESE. We met at Papa Del’s, which completed my triumvirate of Chicago deep dish pizzas. It was fun to see Lynnell again. After second lunch, we walked to the engineering quad, and I showed the girls the quad that didn’t exist when I was a student there, and pointed out all the buildings I had classes in. We walked through the Everett Labs building where Uncle Allen and Phoebe’s godfather, Pete, did the majority of their work, as well as where my first boss when I worked for the Sites had his office. We stopped through Follett’s to pick up our schwag, and we were on our way to Bloomington by 4pm.
We got stuck by the traditional and perpetual construction on I-74 just 15 miles from our destination where it went down to a single lane. I was worried because I had pushed it on the gas to try to make it all the way. We still had plenty of gas though. We arrived at 5pm after 478 miles. Mandy and Nathan provided us food which was really nice. I got the girls showered and ready for bed so when Jada and Mandy came back from the store to pick up some fixin’s for eggs we could put them to bed. It was 8pm before they went to bed, and I was worried they’d be awake until at least 9pm, but they were asleep by 8:30pm. Of course, that’s still 9:30pm based on the time they woke up this morning in Ohio.
July 10: Bloomington, IL to Pekin, IL
I kept waking up last night despite the nice accommodations, so when it was finally actually time to get up, I made up some eggs for everyone for breakfast. The girls were up before I took my shower this morning just before 6am. However, they were well behaved and just quietly reading their books in their room while I showered. I gave them some toast while I prepared the eggs. Ellen took a long time to eat again, but she said her head wasn’t hurting any more. They played UNO and Aggravation games with Nathan and Mandy before we could leave for the Discovery Museum. When we got down to the museum (which is in Normal, not Bloomington, if you Google for it, right next to the campus of Illinois State University), we were fortunate to find that parking in the garage was complimentary today due to the Sugar Creek Arts Festival that was setup all the way down the street in front of the Discovery Center. We got in with our OMSI membership again and paid for Nathan and Mandy. The girls had a lot of fun. On the first floor, they played in the Avanti’s pizzeria area making up pizzas and firing them in the oven. Then we moved into the health services area where Phoebe wanted Uncle Nathan to prescribe her crutches and then do her teeth. Next we moved up to the second floor where they played with the agricultural displays, learned about how garbage is recycled and put in landfill, and played with the air duct exhibit moving balls and scarves through a set of tubes. Nathan found himself mesmerized by a kind of a gravitram(for those of you in the Portland area, think of the OMSI ball machine near the Planitarium entry) made with musical instruments. The girls also liked this exhibit and Mandy enjoyed the xylophone sound. There was also the suspended maze that Ellen worked her way through. Finally, we went to the top floor where they could paint on the windows, and Ellen and I played a game of chess on the huge board and 2 foot tall pieces. I started strong controlling the middle of the board, but she was able to work one of her knights in behind me and pretty much wiped the board with me at that point.
We went back to Nathan and Mandy’s house for a quick lunch before heading for Pekin around 1pm. It was a short hop there from Bloomington. We completely unpacked the back of the car, but we left everything in the box for now. We’ll unpack that later to air out when we’re sure it isn’t going to rain some day. I did some of our laundry and hung that out to dry. I took a nap while the girls played the game Sorry with Nana and Bapa. We had dinner, and the girls made my birthday dessert for tomorrow, Strawberry Icebox Pie. Mmmm. Pie. I pre-ordered tickets for the St. Louis Gateway Arch tram ride for next weekend too. Then we got the girls to bed around 8pm, and Jada and I went out for ice cream at the DQ.