Daily Didactic
Today was our first really long travel day on our trek back across the midwest.

We started moderately early and were walking on Ottawa Beach by 9:00. We might have passed on the opportunity, but when we arrived around 9:00 last night the Holland State Park ranger informed us that we had to buy an eight dollar day pass to the beach along with our campsite. While it wasn't an eight dollar walk by any means, it is really interesting how much the great lakes feel like the ocean. We wandered out to the end of a breakwater that held a small crowd of morning fishermen and watched one haul in a good sized fish that we couldn't identify. It was a nice beach, but we'd rather pay west coast prices for our large bodies of water.

For the next nine or ten hours we drove out of Michigan, through a corner of Indiana, around Chicago as much as we could, on through Illinois, across Iowa, and eventually stopped just across the border in Minnesota for the night at the curiously empty Myre-Big Island State Park. As far as all day drives go, the day had a a nice mix of industrial wasteland, big city driving, windy small town roads, and interstate across corn fields. And, of course, any five state day feels productive.

Morning in Holland State Park		Don't be confused by the railings
Our eight dollar beach		The breakwater and us
Ducks cleaning		The red lighthouse
The eight dollar beach's tree		In particular martinis
Leaving Holland, which really has a very dutch thing going		Cool metal art
Preparing to race around Chicago		Pretty old building
The skyline with Sears Tower. We hear they are changing its name. Really		Sizable water tank
The Morton plant		When one won't do
There were a lot of cool barns today		And fields
And small towns		Weather in the distance
The Mississippi River		Dubuque welcomes us
It's not you know...		Sunset, more or less
Windmills		If Floyd can have one, why can't Brian?

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