Last night ended up a bit later than planned. Tal skyped Kevin and we chatted and had a few laughs for well over an hour. We all got to bed about three am.
Due to the late finish it was a slower start to today than planned. Tal had to go get his mother who'd been staying with his uncle while we were there and we went along for the ride. He's not too far away, about half an hour but it's very different there. He's on a horse ageistment property, lots of green fields and of course horses. He took us out to one of the paddocks so we could feed the horses apples. All a nice change from what we usually get to do.
With his Mum on board we returned to Tal's, did the last bit of packing from the fridge, said our farewells and we were on our way again.
First stop was the local Krogers to restock. We'd let everything run down to near on nothing due to staying with first Sanjay then Tal for all up four nights.
Heading out of town re-enforced our opinion that there's an awful lot of lakes around here!
Sticking to back roads we went through a lot of small towns, passed corn fields and more lakes.
We crossed briefly into Indiana which looked a lot dryer and less lush than most of Michigan had. It was also ultra industrial, power stations both nuclear and coal, a steel works and oil refineries. Not the highlight of an around Lake Michigan tour :-(
We followed the southern most reaches of Lake Michigan then turned north to follow the lakes western side into Illinois.
Driving into Chicago was a huge improvement. The city skyline is impressive and the drive to our hotel which is a little north of the city was great; the city on our left and lake on the right, all with the sun slowly going down in an orange ball of fire. There were a lot of people running, cycling or walking their dogs.
The hotel looked less than impressive from outside but is pretty good and has all we need.
Chicken and pasta for dinner and we settled in to watch a couple of the new season TV shows. I crashed out early with an antihistamine; three days of cats and a smoker has done my sinuses in :-(