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Once we got out of the town, there was not much of a traffic. We saw lots of plowed fields with patches of thick bunch of trees. Sometimes, it was like an island of trees, surrounded by the brown fields all around. There was almost a continuous line of trucks on the road. We soon entered Indiana, "Crossroads of America".
We saw signs along the highway that read: "Emergency stopping, 2 hour limit". We couldn't figure out what that implied! What do you do if you cannot move within 2 hours, say because you ran out of gas? Or does the state of Indiana guarantee that your emergency, no matter what, will be resolved within two hours?
As we neared Chicago, the traffic became heavy. We had to pay a few 40 cents toll. It was like feeding a bottomless pit! Surely reminded me of New Jersey! To add to the chaos, there were lots of trucks. Fortunately, the "cars only" lane was much faster.
As we crossed into Wisconsin, we could see that we had entered Lakeland. There were lots of small trees in marshes and small ponds in-between. We reached our friend's place in late afternoon. We then visited Lake Pewaukee and Lake Michigan. I did not realize how big Lake Michigan was until I saw it! The huge water body made the weather quite cold and chilled us.
We had taken the detour to meet Bipin and Ashwini, our friends from UMBC. After spending a nice evening chatting, we were more than happy to stuff ourselves with the delicious food made by Ashwini! For the next seven days, there was no homemade food for us!