a long journey into night

Ready to roll, literally.

We didn't manage to break our record of never quite getting on the road as early as we intended. Still, we were crossing the Skyway shortly after 7 a.m. There's something morbidly attractive about the view from the bridge—a gritty, industrial landscape that somehow evokes a feeling of might along with an awareness of pollution.

The gritty, industrial view from the Chicago Skyway.

Google Maps promised us a 12-hour journey. Apparently, nobody at Google headquarters stops for bathrooms or ice cream. I'm sure they also don't base time estimates on 11-year-old, four-cylinder Honda minivans loaded with gear and pulling trailers holding eight kayaks. For us, it was a 14-hour journey.
But it's so easy to keep everyone entertained these days. When the kids were little, we plied them with toys and read them books (and also stopped every hour or two). When they were in elementary school, we discovered books on tape. Now we're a mobile media unit. We plug an inverter into the cigarette lighter and power two laptops. Jeremy spent much of the trip writing a program for a line-following robot on one. Alec and I took turns watching a kayak DVD and writing on the other. And Hannah alternately listened to her iPod and caught up on her sleep.

We rolled in around 10 p.m.750 miles later, we've arrived at Adventure Crafters.