Dayton to Chicago

I woke at 6.30am (as usual!) and met Kathy for breakfast at 8.30am after I had checked out. As it was so local we walked across to Bob Evans and I had a very similar breakfast to the omelette that I usually have at Denny’s. We had a good old natter and then I left at about 10am to head north west towards Chicago.

It was supposed to be a 5.5 hour journey so I planned to stop in Indianapolis after about two hours to visit the Morris-Butler House but after I’d driven for about an hour I saw a sign to the Wilbur Wright Birthplace so decided to break up my journey there instead. It was a bit out of the way as it was 7 miles off the freeway but was fascinating. I watched a film first and then had one of the volunteers as a personal guide as there were no other visitors there! Whereas Hawthorn House was more about Orville and his life after flying, this was about all the Wright family and their actual historic flights.

Afterwards I wandered around the house itself by myself and that was a bit eerie as it’s all decked out as a house in the early 1900s that looks lived in and I was in there on my own. I was especially spooked when the staircase started creaking when I was upstairs!




I then set off again for Chicago and everything was going fine until I was about an hour outside the city when I hit bad, bad traffic! This was at about 4.00pm so I hadn’t expected to hit any. We just crawled for about an hour and then I realised that as this was Illinois I was now on CST time so in fact it was an hour earlier so the traffic jam had started at 3pm – don’t people in Chicago work a full day?!!!

In the end I was stuck in traffic for two and a half hours and at one point I had to make a diversion to a shopping mall as I was bursting for the loo. Eventually I got to my hotel (I’m staying in Hoffman Estates which is about 45 minutes north of Chicago) at about 6pm CST. I’m having some luxury for a couple of days as I’m staying at a Hilton (in fact it wasn’t much more than the Red Roof Inn in Dayton) and it’s a lovely hotel.



I had a nice Italian meal and then had a relaxing evening in my room (as the next few days will be really hectic). I had a long wallow in the bath and then watched some things on iPlayer and got to sleep at about 11pm.