There’s something about Chicago, I still can’t put my finger on it, but I do love that city. One day, I will be back.

And onto a week where I finally get out into the lands where I start to see what I’m genuinely excited about seeing : nothing. Yes, I really want to see big flat expanses of nothing, and finally start to get my head around how big this country it.

I dabbled with the feeling a few weeks ago in the rolling countryside of West Virginia. Alabama gave me a moment too of feeling like I was exploring new lands, and just an hour west on the Interstate system out of Chicago this morning, I hit Iowa – another brand new state for me – and the vast emptiness of it opened up before me and gave me a little chill down my spine.

Now this is still quite built up my comparison of what I’ve been told Wyoming and Montana are like, but it still did it for me, and I began humming Mansun’s Wide Open Space, followed swiftly by Road to Nowhere and Big Area – a whole expansive playlist forming in my head, culminating in Go West, naturally.

I trundled down I88 – part of which is the Ronald Regan memorial highway – he was born in the nearby town of Tampico. I’m often amused by the insistence of American to ‘name’ its roads after famous people. What purpose does it actually serve? Do the drivers really care? The fortieth president of these mighty lands was special enough though to warrant a profile picture of him on the sign declaring the road in his name – maybe that’s something they only do for presidents.

My interstate knowledge is rather-geekily expanding too. I’ve know for a while that even numbered roads run west/east and odd numbered roads run north/south, but I learned a few new facts today too:

If the number of an interstate is divisible by 5, it marks a long connecting road between many states (I-90 and I-10 for example) whereas old humble I-22 doesn’t go that far at all.

The three-digit interstate roads are for those roads that bypass the major cities or are short interstates off of the main ones towards the major urban area.

A three-digit intestate will always inherit the two digit number of the nearby major interstate. e.g I-610 or I-410 are associated with I-10, and those also indicate the road comes off of I-10 and link up again with it later. If the first digit is an odd numbered one, such as I-310 or I-510 it indicates that it does not relink up with the the I-10.

I get on the I-80 heading west. At one point, there were some roadworks and all the the traffic from the westbound carriageway were switched onto the eastbound one. To separate the lines of traffic, concrete bollards has been place along the lengths of the works – an impenetrable concrete wall. I knew it was impenetrable, because I counted fourteen flattened raccoons that in the middle of the night had tried to run across like they normally might, only to … Bump! hit a concrete wall, and then … Squish! an 18 wheeler semi brings it’s dare-devil highway crossing adventures to an end, as they’ve got nowhere to run.

I also made a ‘tube’ stop today at a same named place, only to find it closed – because it wasn’t really a town it was a museum.

On the outskirts of Rockford, in Illinois is the Tinker Swiss Cottage museum, but yet again I’d failed to do my research on museums again, and being a Monday – found it closed. The only day of the week that it’s closed – exactly as was the Britney Spears museum down in Louisiana, Monday of last week. I didn’t learn, did I?

Must.
Not.
Go.
To.
Museums.
On Mondays.

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