Summer Trip 2023 Day 21

6 July 2023

Today involved skirting Lake Michigan to get from Madison WI to Grand Rapids MI, and Chicago gets in the middle of that fun. The total drive was 394 miles.

I do love Chicago, but not driving through it on the freeways – at least 30-40 minutes were lost due to traffic getting to The Loop; everything sped up on the other side of it as is almost always the case. The odd jog in Michigan was due to a detour to a known-good brewpub that serves German food 🙂

The day started off clear in Madison. In this photo taken from my hotel parking lot, you can see the state capitol dome in the distance – Great Dane Brewing Company, where I ate on the 4th, was just a couple of blocks from that!

By the time I left Madison an hour later, everything was clouds and it stayed that way – except for a brief reprieve around Milwaukee – until I was well into Michigan. I wish I could have taken a photo driving towards The Loop as there was enough wildfire smoke in the air to make all the tall buildings look almost ghostly.

I did make a quick stop at the Michigan Welcome Plaza on I-94 but didn’t grab any photos. This was a pretty nice one as these things go, and I was particularly surprised that there was a pretty new playscape for kids! That would have been so welcome a few years ago …

I’ll be at my hotel in Grand Rapids for three nights. It’s in a beautiful area if you ignore the very busy roads not far away. It’s also very new – everything has that “new hotel” smell and as you can see, there isn’t even any grass surrounding it yet!

I won’t be driving a lot the next couple of days but will try to get some photos of where I do go.