This was the first of several snow storms we have driven through on the trip. We were driving from Laramie towards Cheyenne when the snow started to fall.

This campground has the significant attribute of being next to a Very Busy Railroad. Trains and whistles all night long … with no breaks, it seems.

This campground had new owners who were busy making a number of renovations. A big plus for this place are the swings at every camp site. Definitely worth the stop.

We stopped for gas and saw a Dairy Queen across the highway. It was time for ice cream! Problem: the DQ was closed for the season. While turning around we saw this old car for sale. Nina had me take her picture (on her phone) beside the car.

We stopped at Carl Sandburg’s birthplace in Galesburg, Illinois. On a previous trip to South Carolina we stopped at the house he lived in later years and where he died, so it seemed fitting to fill in the gap and stop at his birthplace.

This is the back yard of the house where Carl Sandburg was born. His ashes are interred under the rock at the back of the yard.

As we drove into Peoria, we weren’t planning on stopping. We were going to drive further south to Springfield, Illinois to visit some Abraham Lincoln sites. However, there was an accident on the I-474 freeway (a truck hauling a wind turbine rolled over causing some injuries) so I decided to continue into Peoria. Then we saw a sign for the “Caterpillar Visitor’s Center” and decided to stop and see some of their big machines. The visitor’s center was a lot of fun and very informative.

As we drove away, however, somethings (plural) were wrong. There was an unusual sound in the front end and a tire was thumping in the rear. We went to a tire shop who couldn’t work on vehicles of our size and sent us up the street. The Bridgestone store found we had a flat inner tire on the passenger side as well as a missing bushing for the tie rod on the passenger front tire. They were able to fix both and get us back on the road in a couple of hours.

We were able to miss the major lake-effect snow fall that buried western New York State. We drove the “Southern Tier Expressway” through Elmira, Corning, and Binghampton eventually ending up in Glenmont, NY, a suburb of Albany. There was some snow along our route, but we had a nice day for driving.

Nina prefers to drive and I like to watch everything going on around us.

Life is great!