Day 1: Destination: North Henderson, IL

Alrighty. So, after craziness happened, and I finally got off to my start this morning, I spent my first day and night in North Henderson, IL .

Craziness:

Remember how I showed you all my tech? Yeah, didn't get it all in the car ready to set up/test run it before I went to bed for 2.5 hours. That meant that while I woke up on time (5:40am) I actually left my house (after finalizing all of it) at around 8:50.

Finalized car with tech:


The dogs were completely confused. They always seem to know when you're leaving. :(
My dogs. Bad pics, but they are both mildly camera shy. I'll miss them!

Sadie-->

Finally, I got in the car, and went to the bank as well as Mc Donalds. I ran into Neftali (a coworker) which was strange (it was around 9 am or something) and he was waiting for his cousin.

I was just happy McDonalds was still serving breakfast...


Breakfast of champions: additionally I got a sausage biscuit (there is something very reminiscent of my childhood with pertinence towards McDonalds Orange Juice. Odd, that)which I saved the latter half for... for the farm dogs :D

I actually stopped in DeKalb to pick up soda (vanilla coke zero AND the best soda ever: Canada Dry's green tea ginger-ale) but after I messed up by getting on the wrong road, I turned BACK around, and proceeded to pay this:




Which I thought of as highway robbery... until I got to the next toll, which was $1.90 - as was the one after it. In addition to that, the final toll paid was also $1.90:

I told the toll booth operator to have a great day, she seemed surprised and dropped my change in my hand. I had given her 2 dollars. As she said, "You too," I began to drive off and looked at the change. She had given me a penny. I got gypped out of 9 cents by an employee of the State of Illinois. Thankfully by tomorrow night at this time (roughly quarter to 9) I will be out of Illinois... at least for the following 2 and a half weeks.

In the first 4 hours of my drive, I learned quite a bit. One, I-88 is kind of annoying. I also found out that no matter where you drive, people drive like idiots... and sadly, only about a fifth of the drivers on it actually know the correct "rules" of driving on an Interstate. Please don't stay in the passing lane for an extended time... and if you're going to, can you drive faster than the drivers in the right lane instead of matching their speed for four miles?
Something else I learned: most midwestern country roads are awesome. You can see storms coming from miles away... you can see how long your train is going to last when you're waiting for it, you can hear bugs in the summer, and it looks magical in the wintertime: a sea of white. One downside of some country roads, however, is gravel.
Looks gorgeous...



But is somewhat dangerous, and kind of hard on non-trucklike vehicles.

Thomas Jefferson (that's my car's name, for those of you who didn't know) handled it like a pro... albeit a very slow and cautious pro.

Once I got into town and met with Amy, I was super excited, super tired, and we got to eat a super sandwich that Amy made before Steve ran off to work. Then Amy and I ran out to town (Galesburg) to visit the Blick outlet store. Sadly, there was nothing there. Fortunately, it was a good place to pick up just 4 drawing pencils: I guess I left mine at work :(

*Julia, if you're reading this, please don't throw them out, they're in an orange Clinique clutch-sized container*

The good thing about that, is that I now have sketching pencils (what you thought this would
only be photos? Pish posh!! More on the sketching to follow at a later Posting.

The weather was incredibly strange yesterday. I drove through a constant smattering of light drizzles. When I got into the Galesburg area, it seemed to clear up and get really, REALLY hot. I know now why my Grandmother was questioning my sanity for even trying this trip: it's HOT.

This is especially true in my car. To conserve energy and gas, I usually don't run my AC unless it's ABSOLUTELY necessary (i.e. really hot, but pouring outside, or in bumper-to-bumper traffic when really hot) I realized that I needed to keep all my electronics in a cool area when I wasn't using my car or they could get fried right quick. Mental note made, and kept to out here.

Amy and I, upon leaving the art supply store, kind of stumbled upon an old and large cemetary in Galesburg. We took quite a few pics out there: I will link to those a bit later (probably in the next post) some interesting people it seemed: best name? Victoria Snowball. Don't believe me? Tune in for the next post, I'll show you visual evidence.

After the muggy cemetary, the fronts began rolling in. We got ice cream at this this awesome place called Lim's Ice Cream Shoppe . I had a double cone with Mackinac Island Fudge // Toasted Marshmallow... the last of my headache died with that cone, and Amy and I want to invent a potato chip waffle ice cream cone. om-nom-nom. We did a couple more runs: to Goodwill (I had to make sure I had another non-pants bottom, this heat is actually too hot for pants.) And we met with Steve at DQ. At this point, the clouds were totally mixing and beginning to make a crazy storm.



We said Goodbye to Steve, ran to grab ice... I grabbed a picture of the sky. No really, it was super crazy and weird...



And then we went back and took MORE pictures, where Amy actually took an AMAZING shot of lightning (!!!!) I'll link to it when she has it posted :P

The Galesburg Nikon D-70 shots will likely be submitted at DeviantArt and I'll just link to them, perhaps, I'm not sure. They aren't on this computer, and I'm almost done with this post, ha.

We had an awesome rest of the night, fiddlin with photos, catching up on lives, reminiscing. Later on when Steve got home from work, Amy made us all some delicious chicken/broccoli/jasmine rice stir fry which was super-tasty and it hit the spot, followed by some strawberries (can you tell I'm a snidge hungry right now? hehehe) and because of the crazy rainstorms, Amy and I didn't quite camp "outside," but rather, moved the tent into the barn, where we were being attacked by cats throughout the evening (and the morning).

Amy made an excellent point: in a place such as North Henderson, camping actually brings you closer to society than you would be in staying at your own home.

The stars were still out, though. It's so beautiful to see stars all OVER the sky, like some painter had paint on a sheet, and "flapped" the sheet, sending billions of tiny droplets all over an inky canvas. I love the country :D

Lesson learned and/or reminded of:

You can always make yourself warmer fairly easy... but making
yourself cooler is a much more meticulous and often unsuccessful
process.