Wednesday September 17 through September 18, 2025
We are heading south once again. Milwaukee isn’t very far from Chicago and that city is famous for its horrible traffic. And we either have to go through or around Chicago. I asked Dennis who drove truck in this area which way he would go around Chicago and he came up with a route that added over 100 miles to the trip. Hmmm, there’s got to be a better way. A work around is not to go through Chicago on I-94 but skirt it on I-294. So we vote and Dennis’s route loses in favor of I-294.
We take I-94 out of Milwaukee and when the time comes we veer off on I-294. The interstate is busy and there’s an awful lot of construction going on but we only stopped once for about 15 seconds and then just cruised through. Jil tends to get a little nervous in heavy traffic so she kept here nose in her cell phone which not only helped her state of mine but mine also- she tends to start yelling “watch out” a lot. I ask her to be specific. Instead of “watch out” which doesn’t help me focus on what she sees. I’ve asked her to say “on the right” or “on the left” or “brakes”. That helps me as a driver much more than “watch out”.
Before you know it, well maybe 75 minutes later, we reach I-80 and the south side of Chicago. I-294 was a good route regardless of all the construction. I-80 will take us to southbound I-65 in Gary Indiana (69,500 souls), our route through Indiana, Kentucky, an a good part of Tennessee. Gary is a steel town, at one time had 12 blast furnaces to produce steel. Due to foreign competition and automation need for workers fell off and Gary has suffered tremendously.
We turn onto I-65 and our first impression is that the roadway is very rough. I have the cruise control set and the rough road causes it to pop off so I have to reset it. The speed limit is 70mph and I’m not about to exceed 60 or we’ll be bounced out of seats. I-65 traffic seems to consist of one 16 wheeler for every passenger car. In one mile stretch I counted 22 big rigs- and that was just oncoming traffic. I’d guess the amount of trucks traveling south was the same. Every mile was just like that- and that was only oncoming traffic.
The U.S. government became concerned with the Native Americans gathering at Profits Town as numbers reached 1200. Troops were sent in to disperse the Indians, the military leader being William Henry Harrison who later became President of the United States (Tippicanoe and Tyler too!). The battle occurred at Tippicanoe Creek and was fierce. The Army won and burned the Shawnee Prophfits Town.
We are stopping at Profitstown State Park for two nights. At the site of today’s Prophetstown State Park, the great Shawnee warrior Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa (the Prophet) established Prophetstown as a gathering place for like-minded Native peoples seeking to resist the impact of Europeans in the early 1800s.
Profitstown State Park offers a water park, a very nice campground, a visitors center, walking trails and a farm. The park is in tall grass- yes grass 4-6′ tall. It’s one of the nicest state parks that we have visited and it’s loaded with U.S. history.
It looks like the park is getting ready for a great Halloween celebration as there’s a whole bunch of Halloween figures scattered along the walking paths.
We’re heading down to Cave County RV Park tomorrow. The park is in southern Kentucky in Cave City. Mammoth Cave National Park is nearby, thus the name. We are not visiting the cave this trip but plan on visiting in the future. In reality there are three caves nearby.
So as our grandkids used to say, “See you soon”.
Travel With Jil and Mike 