A quick trip home
Every so often, you spend the day working and then decide to drive back to Illinois to drop one of your kids off with another of your kids in Central Illinois. We left Thursday, stayed in a slightly warm and somewhat weird hotel outside of Atlanta, and eventually finished the drive on Friday. The only real drama on the trip? Just after we hopped on the highway Friday morning, a massive accident closed I-75 north of Kennesaw, Ga and forced us to detour around it. A minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of the trip, but super annoying in the moment.
Did you see anything cool?
No. Not really. Cruising through Nashville, TN, a group of 6 US Army helicopters flew over head.

We crossed over the Tennesese River while we were on I-24…

..and then quickly crossed over the Ohio River. This bridge has been under construction for years and it makes me absolutely crazy.

Did you do anything fun in Illinois?
Well.. I bought some dice at a game shop in Bloomingon, IL. It was a busy night in such a small town. A hockey game was going on a few blocks away, a concert was happening a block away, and there was a guy selling Magic the Gathering cards at the game store. We saw the McLean County Museum of History all lit up:

We grabbed meat sticks from our favorite meat market in Yorkville, IL and had pizza at Gino’s East in Winfield, IL:

The best part?
I got the road trip app I’ve been working on mostly working. On the way to Illinois, we weren’t able to share the trip, but we were able to track where we saw license plates from around North America:

On the way home, I managed to get sharing to work and we were able to collaborate on the trip. The map doesn’t look much different but not all of these pins/flags was captured by my wife on her phone. We were both able to tap the app and mark which plates we saw and where. So cool.

it was a quick good trip
At the end of the day, I drove 2700 miles in about 83 hours. It was so much driving, but it went pretty quickly.