The Great Ganesha

A Lakeside Breakfast
We started the day deciding to enjoy a breakfast on the waterfront of Lake Erie. Sounds romantic, adventurous, fun and overall not a bad idea. Well, not a bad idea IF you have oodles of time to spare. Theoretically, Erie is around five miles or so from Elyria, OH. In practice, it turns out, it’s around twenty miles, and along small roads with signals and low speed limits. So much for that idea. A quick zip to have breakfast on the waterfront and a hop, skip and jump back to the Ohio turnpike, right? WRONG! Try a long arduous, traffic-ridden, heat-laden drive while suffering a severe caffeine withdrawal.

At any rate, we somehow managed to make it to The Lunch Box which is a lakeside greasy-spoon. It wasn’t so bad. The coffee was (as usual) disappointing, but the food was, in the local parlance, a’ight.

Post-breakfast, we took a walk by the The Dock of the Bay Marina and as you can see, that made the trip and the torture totally worthwhile (note: sarcasm). Still, it made for some minor interesting conversation, post-trauma.

Ohio: Land of Farms and Turnpikes
Finally, we hit the Ohio Turnpike. But we remembered that we were on vacation so we pulled over immediately at a service area and took some pics in front of the watchamacallit thingamajig that says Ohio Turnpike. Take that, you doubters!

We also had the dubious honor of seeing an authentic Ohio farm off the turnpike! Three words: Golly, gee and wowee! Well, that’s probably how a three-year-old would respond to seeing that. Because that’s about the age when one would probably be interested in such things. But we’re tourists, so we have to take the pics. Have memory in camera, will use!

Traffic at South Bend
Well, we thought the drive to Lake Erie was pretty torture-some. That is, until we hit a bottlneck on Rte 80 right around the Indiana-Illinois border. South Bend, IN, to be precise. Five miles took us over an hour. And the heat. Oh for god’s sake, the heat! The air-conditioner works fine during high-speed highway driving, but when it comes to stop-and-go traffic, fuhgeddaboutit! Sweat pouring down my face, sun beating down, the smell of tarmac and truck exhaust. Now if that isn’t hell, I don’t know what is. Whoever thought up the idea of hell being hot was one smart cookie. I’d take the cold over the heat any day.

When one is stuck in that kind of situation, things can get pretty desperate. And, as we all know desperate times call for desperate measures. When the nice lady’s daughter had to use the restroom, she got one of the rides of her life. You know what they say, when you gotta go, you gotta go!

A Nice Gujarati Dinner
Anyhoo (as they say, in these here parts), the trip ended with setting up camp at the Scientists’ house just outside of Chicago, in Darien, IL. With a nice, home-cooked Gujju meal to boot. Now that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout!

I will end this post with a nice tummy rub. A rub that is indicative of satiety, exhaustion, a nice, comfortable bed, and the nagging feeling that we should have done some more miles today. [Insert tummy-rubbing sound here].

Tomorrow, we have to make up the miles we lost to traffic today and try and get to Sioux Falls, SD.