This was the big trip. After watching the car make it to California and back and not develop any new problems I threw a luggage box on the roof and at the start of September I headed to a computer show in Schaumburg, Illinois. It's by absolutely no coincidence that along the way I took a detour to Kenosha. This car wasn't built at this plant but it would be a crime to not see the monument and reach Lake Michigan.
It's a three day trip. This is where I wish my Cruise Control would be better behaved but for the most part as long as I didn't tap the brake in favor of the SET/COAST button it was fine. The route had me follow the Trans-Canada Highway from Kamloops, through the Rockies, over the prairies and head south into North Dakota at Winnipeg. I kept South until I hit Sioux Falls where I met up with TheBirdman and we chatted for a few hours. He sent me on my way again with the guts of an axle he was scrapping out, so I now have the parts to build another complete AMC 35 axle with 2.35 gearing and good axle shafts.
From there is was getting into the I90 which
technically gets you straight to my destination, after staying a night in Madison I detoured to Milwaukee, ran along the lake and arrived in Kenosha. After pulling up to Alfano Performance on the main drag (which wasn't open today because he was heading off to a race that weekend) an getting a few photos parked out front I headed over to the monument on the East side of the former Kenosha site and snapped a few photos, then I hunted around looking for a place to get the car washed because it was so encrusted with bugs it was attracting flies, swung back to the plant for a few more photos of a cleaner car, then headed to the lake.
This is entirely likely to be the first time in 42 years this car has been far enough East to see the Great Lakes. It's also entirely possible it may be the last time as well. After a bit of a bit of a ceremonial dumping of lake water on the hood ornament it was time to continue on to Schaumburg.
On top of other experiments, I'm curious how aggressive Illinois is about unpaid tolls. ICBC historically seems to tell out-of-province transit authorities to get stiffed when they come knocking for unpaid dues. It least for WSDOT and CalTrans, so I took the tollway through to my destination at the Renaissance Schaumburg Hotel and Convention Center. the car drove around the area for the next few days moving people between restaurants, liquor stores and fast food. It also saw the trip to the empty parking lot and field across the street from the hotel for some uh, test drives. Occasionally at 2 in the morning.
Even parked, it stuck out. Quite a few people noticed it and for a few days it circulated around on the social networks. We'd be at Culver's looking out the window at people looking at the car ant taking a picture, then 20 minutes later someone at the table would show me their phone and it's the person who took the photo.
Anyways, the show went great, the hotel was great and on Monday morning the car was once again packed and off it went most of the same route back home. This time however we went more diagonally through Minnesota and North Dakota, passing endless farmland and the occasional nuclear missile silo (yeah that caught me off guard as well) and entering back into Canada in Estevan, SK and back up to Moose Jaw, highway 1 and almost a straight line back home until Salmon Arm because an accident closed the highway, so I went the long way around a mountain and stopped at the same gas station I started on.
Final tally:
Orange indicates the California Trip in August. Green indicates this trip to Illinois. To my surprise it costs less to drive to Illinois than it does to drive to California, if not because the gas is cheaper. Overall I was about $760 under budget for fuel, so I hope these numbers reflect what a running feedback system and highway gearing results in for overall economy and mileage with a giant box strapped to the roof.
Speaking of which, like with the trip to California, a camera was snapping the photos the entire time. Here's the full ten days of driving condensed into over 72000 photos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LyG9MTq1as
Topic: West Coast to Kenosha (Read 3045 times)