We left Chicago around 10:30AM. The next few days was going to have our longer driving days of the whole trip at about 3.5 to 4.5 hours each day. Despite it being mid morning the highway was quite busy at the beginning and until a fair ways out of the city. We thought it might have been because they had lanes that were only one direction (assuming depending on the time of day). It was hard to believe the highway exiting the city had a speed limit of 70mph (~120km/hr). The interstate had a toll but it is all camera based and we have to pay online so we have to figure that out later. We were headed to the La Crosse area in Wisconsin, but this was the first night in the first month of our trip that we didn’t have a campground pre-booked. It was nice to have the flexibility and we knew the area we were going likely wasn’t going to be too busy. We checked out some campgrounds on the drive and decided on one. We didn’t have smartphones on our bike trip 13 years ago, and we never had a data plan visiting the US before either so it was super convenient to be able to do this while travelling.
We drove until Janesville to take a lunch break, where we stopped at the Workman’s Grocery store. We could not believe the size of the store! As big as a Costco and there were SO many varieties of everything. They literally had an aisle of just Kellogg’s cereal and another aisle for General Mills cereal. We picked up types of apples we can’t get back home easily (Galaxy apples and lemonade apples from New Zealand). We are quite limited in how much we can carry in our van so we had to restrain ourselves. The kids felt I was torturing them by touring them around the grocery store with too many temptations they couldn’t have, so while Katherine finished shopping we made our way outside. It was mid day and the sun was getting quite strong. For lunch we headed to a nearby park, which to our surprise had a zip line! After lunch the kids had a lot of fun until they started fighting about the order of the line for the zip line. It was a hot day so that might have been getting to them. By then quite a few kids stopped by and the line for the zip line was getting long so it was time to hit the road again.
The drive was very straight forward on the I-90 interstate, but it was neat to see the scenery change to hills as we got closer to our destination. The interstate was a four lane divided highway and had minimal traffic. We passed Wisconsin Dell, which had so many massive water park and water park resort hotels it was incredible. The kids were a little sad we were not stopping there. We turned off the highway after the long drive to head towards our Blue Bird campground. The backroads were windy and it took us into a valley. The campground was basically at the end of the road in the valley.
The campground had a full service bar, and everyone was super friendly inside (you had to go to the bar to check in). Of all the campgrounds I have been to this was definitely the first one with an actual bar building. They even had good alt rock music. I was however clearly the stranger from out of town with everyone looking at me as I entered the bar. They suggested I sit down and grab a drink while I wait to get checked in but I mentioned the kids were in the van so I couldn’t. They gave me some tips on the good sites to pick based on morning or afternoon sun and we went out to pick our site. There were many RVs but there were mostly empty sites along the creek for tent camping. We picked the suggested site right beside the porta-potties and water tap. It had a nice view of the hills behind the campground. We really needed to do some laundry so we got some quarters from the bar.
The reviews online mentioned no mosquitos, and surprisingly there were hardly any mosquitoes in the campground. The campground also had a spring fed man made pond that the kids were able to go swimming in after dinner. They had a play ground and to the kids delight a “Gaga ball” pit). They even had wifi! Mia got to video chat with her friend Tessa from back home and to find out how their soccer team had done in their recent game. On the walk home we noticed a number of fireflies and a lot of bats flying around. So far on the trip every campground we stopped at had fireflies, which seem to be quite rare where we live back home. We knew rain was on the way overnight so we made sure everything was packed up for the night. Everyone was quite tired and we all fell asleep quickly.
Trip Around The World 
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