Joliet, IL the end of the road and our journey home (Tues, & Wed. Aug. 4 & 5)

We are really glad we stayed in a hotel Tuesday night. We had some really good thunderstorms overnight and awoke to a pretty good rain. It would not have been fun taking the camper down in this!! So we headed off to breakfast nice and dry. We met a woman, Lulu, who is from the Route 66 e-mail group who had been following our trip and was really anxious to meet us. She was really nice and shared a lot of stories of her trips on Route 66. After eating she came along with us to the Route 66 museum in Joliet. It was a nice museum, a good way to wrap up our time on the road. We stayed there for about an hour and then drove around Joliet to get a few pictures and then headed east for home.

We made one final stop on the way home in Coldwater, MI which is right over the border of Indiana, not far from Route 90, to visit with a cousin of Tony’s who is also our godson. It was nice to see Andy as we had not seen him in several years. After a bunch of wings and fries we said goodbye and continued our journey home.

We decided we were tired of opening and closing the camper and made the decision to drive as far as we could and then either stay in a motel or just crash in the car at rest stops as needed. We ended up going to option 2 hoping it would get us home faster. If you are going to head home you might as well just get there. We managed to continue until about 1 a.m. and then took a two hour break. The boys continued to sleep while I tried to drive further but realized after a few hours I needed another break. So I got another 2 ½ hours of sleep before continuing on and getting home. The drive was tough because from Buffalo to Westfield we kept hitting rain. It was the kind of rain that is so heavy that you can barely see in front of you. It slowed us down quite a bit and definitely added a lot of time to our ride home.

Once home we found out quickly our journey was not quite over because when the boys went to open the camper to unload they realized that somehow the crank to open the camper up got left at the last stop. So we had to rehitch the camper to the car and drive an hour in rush hour traffic to Bristol, CT, the closest Star Craft dealer to find a crank that would work. Luckily they had one so back home again we went to empty out the camper.

Today was a day of mixed emotions for us. We are tired so we are glad to be headed home but we also are sad as we know there is so much we didn’t see and people we didn’t meet. It will all have to wait for another time. We really had a lot of fun, met a lot of great people, and saw many amazing things.

Thanks to all of you who followed our blog. It was fun sharing this with all of you!!!! We will be posting all of Colin's 3,000+ pictures on Flicker some time this week. We will post to the blog when it is done and give you information on how to find them if you are interested.