JoAnna, Eddie, and I left the house at 2:40 p.m., with a light snow still falling and nearly six inches of the wet, sticky variety on the ground. The Altima rumbled over the washboard surface of Gammon Road as we headed toward the Beltline.
This is going to be a challenge to my sanity, I figured, keeping this thought to myself.
Surprisingly, the Beltline was in excellent “winter”-driving shape. The surface was wet, of course, and there was lots of spray from all the traffic, but I felt confident driving at 55-60 miles per hour. I-90 looked good, too, at least for the first 10 miles that we drove on it.
“Maybe this part of the trip won’t be so bad after all,” I said with a wary sense of relief.
A few minutes later, I realized I might have spoken too soon.
“I see a lot of brake lights up ahead,” I announced. “Not a good sign.”
The flow of traffic looked to be slowing down considerably. We were near the source of a 20-mile-long traffic jam that occurred during one of last months’ ice-and-snow storms. People who experienced this catastrophe were stuck in their cars for as much as 12 hours. I didn’t want even a mild version of this to happen to us.
The traffic going in our direction never came to a complete stop. We did have to slow down a few more times before reaching the Illinois border. In one case, a truck cab (no trailer attached) somehow ended up 30 feet from the side of the road, an icy stretch of I-90 just north of Janesville. In another case, a Matrix just like ours ended up in the breakdown lane facing oncoming traffic. In other words, the occasional slowdown was due to a combination of caution and rubbernecking.
The most direct route to Virginia Beach follows the Indiana Toll Road, the Ohio Turnpike, and the Pennsylvania Turnpike to where I-70 breaks off to the southeast. Had we followed this route, we would have accompanied the storm that had made our morning in Middleton so miserable. During the 24 hours before our trip, I went online and checked and double-checked the weather forecasts for points east: Chicago, South Bend, Toledo, Akron, Pittsburgh. It was the same bad news everywhere. Snow. Snow. Snow. Snow.
As an alternative, I selected I-39 south to Bloomington, Illinois, and I-74 east to Indianapolis, which was approximate destination on the first day of our road trip. Thirty miles south of Rockford, the snow had disappeared from the endlessly flat landscape, and by the time we reach Bloomington, the dashboard thermometer read 60º. It had been 30º when we left Middleton.
Traveling along I-39, I was reminded of how fast Illineasians love to drive, especially when traffic is light. Twenty miles north of Bloomington, I felt like a Grandpa putt-putting along in his old but well-maintained Buick, even though our speedometer needle rested between 75 and 80 miles per hour. An SUV on steroids blew past us going 100, I’d guess.
In spite of Eddie’s initial objections, we stopped for dinner at Woody’s Family Restaurant in Le Roy, population 3,332 according to our Illinois road map. From the vantage point of its only exit on I-74, the town looks to be about a quarter that size.
Woody’s looks like a dump from its back side, which is what we first saw as we left the Interstate. Two large, bright yellow awnings on either side of the entrance give the place a welcoming feel, however. We also noted a lot of cars in the parking lot, most likely of locals with no place else to go.
I lost a good portion of my appetite when our food was served. The size of my catfish looked as though Jesus had just performed his miracle of the loaves and fishes. Maybe it was the monstrous portion, or the breaded tail and dorsal fins, but the taste of the meat wasn’t what I remembered, particularly not from our visit to Louisiana in 1999. When Eddie took a sample, he immediately spit it into a napkin.
“That’s way too fishy,” he said.
No wonder most people prefer chain restaurants when they travel.
Woody's Family Restaurant is located in the middle of the light blob of earth above the final "r" in EnviroMapper.
Le Roy's other non-chain restaurant goes by the name of Uncle Tom's Pancake House. (Serious!)
Here's a photo of downtown Le Roy, with the sidewalks already rolled up well before the end of the day.
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