Cranes, Planes, and Automobiles

Golly what a day! We finally made it to Aurora, IL this evening with only a couple of slowdowns. We left MN this morning around 11 and stopped in Baraboo, WI to go to the cow pie factory (it's a kind of candy - they're like giant caramel pecan clusters). We also stopped at the International Crane Foundation. It was pretty incredible. They had 15 different species of cranes. They breed them and then send the chicks all over the world. It was pretty cool. Who knew that was in the middle of Wisconsin? Thanks for the tip D&T! We loved it. Baraboo was also holding an air show tomorrow so these really cool old planes kept flying overhead too. Then we headed off to to our hotel in Aurora.


It was only supposed to be a 3 hour ride and we were on the road at about 3 pm but we didn't make it to the hotel until about 8:30. Being the cheap and thrifty (and wacky) Wilkins' that we are, we decided to avoid the two toll roads that we would have to take to get into Aurora (a suburb just outside of Chicago) by taking side roads. The maps made it look pretty simple. However, we did end up getting lost just inside Aurora because we came at the city from a different direction from our Mapquest directions. We drove around for about an hour but had no luck and no detailed maps of Aurora (we called the hotel but they gave us awful directions as well). By this point Sophia had totally lost it and was screaming at the top of her lungs. I think she was pretty much getting it out for all of us. She finally calmed down when a roaring fire truck went by. She got totally silent and then whispered "bire guck, yights" (fire truck, lights). It was cute but I don't know if it was quite enough to redeem herself from the screaming. Anyway, we ended up getting back on the freeway that we should have been on in the first place and finally found the hotel. It's only a Super 8 but we were actually impressed at how nice it was. The good impression quickly disappeared when the tub wouldn't plug when I was giving Sophia a bath and when the toilet overflowed the first time I flushed it. We called the front desk and they said maintenance had already left for the day and that they didn't have another room to give us. We're still waiting for someone to come up. We'll see if we make it through the night! We're planning on getting up bright and early to be on the road at 5 am tomorrow to head to New York. We've done this everyday we've had a big drive and we've loved it! We love when it gets to be 10 am and we already have 5 hours of driving out of the way! Hope you're all well!


P.S. We saw this thing on the driving by on the side of the road. The top had some sort of golden calf head on top. We're not quite sure about the whole thing.

Total miles for the day: 394
Lowest gas price for the day: $2.92 (although missed it and ended up paying $3.09)
Biggest lesson learned from the day: We will take all toll roads from now on because although it may be cheaper, it is not necessarily faster to avoid the toll roads.