Friday, June 16, 2006

The Road Trip Chronicles Vol. 1: South Saint Paul-Ohio Rest Area #0840

I've decided to record the story of my epic air museum road trip for all the world to read, starting with, logically enough, the first leg.

I left home at about 8:00 A.M. on Friday, May 12th. I headed out travelling down US-52 and then headed east on I-90 towards Chicago. I've gotta say, I-90 through Wisconsin is quite possibly the most beautiful scenery I've ever seen.

Anyways, as I headed east on I-90, I stopped in Sparta Wisconsin for some food, and travelled on the:

(Astronaut Deke Slayton Memorial Highway)

Later on in Wisconsin, I got a great surprise, when I stumbled across an Air Museum I didn't realize I would be passing, the Volk Field National Guard Museum. They had a small museum in a log cabin, and a bunch of aircraft on poles outside, including a P-51D, an F-84F, an F-86H, an F-100C, an F-102, an F-105, an F-4C, a KC-97L, an A-10A, an A-7, an AH-1, and a UH-1. But my favorite airplane there was this:

It's a TF-102, which is just an F-102 that was turned into a trainer by bulging out the cockpit and giving it side-by side seating. However, this meant that a once supersonic interceptor was made subsonic. On the F-102's direct successor, the F-106, they gave the F-106B trainer tandem seating.

After Volk Field, I ran into this:


(The worst traffic I've ever seen, with the Sears Tower in the background)

It literally took me two and a half hours to get from O'hare to Gary Indiana, which is a distance of about 20 miles. It also cost me $13 on their toll roads. This screwed up my plans conciderably, as I had intended to camp at a KOA in Richmond Indiana, but with all the traffic, there was no way in hell I was going to get there in time. (Side note, NW Indiana is the most depressing scenery I've ever seen.)

So then I travelled south through the center of Indiana, and then hooked a left towards Ohio, and stopped for the night at rest stop #0840:


I fell asleep that night with dreams of the USAF museum in my head...

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