Minnesota > Wisconsin > Illinois > Indiana >
I left Minnesota about noon on my way to camp in North Carolina. I’d been planning on this trip for months—not the kind of planning where you get things ready to go—because I’m not really a planner—but more the kind of planning where I knew for months that I’d be doing this at some point. The kind of planning you just do in your head without actually doing anything. I’d also planned to leave by 9 a.m. or so, but then my friend Matt came over to borrow my ice shack while I was gone and we went out for beers.
I’d originally intended to leave in October, but after a successful test run working from a state park in Minnesota, I returned home to find the camper was tearing the back of my truck off. I was fortunate to have made it into my driveway, the camper hanging on by a few threads of steel, and even more fortunate it didn’t fly off on the interstate and kill someone.
That eventually sorted itself out, like all things do, and I escaped with the same camper but a different truck just as a cold spell was coming through, dropping from a tolerable 25 degrees to a temperature you can count on one hand, even if you’re missing a finger or two, which you probably are if you’ve lived in Minnesota long enough. A person can tolerate 25 degrees. Dress warm and you’re alright. Closer to 0 and it’s the kind of cold that makes your face hurt, and that’s when you start thinking about alternative living situations, like 1) moving and 2) no longer living.
As you head into Wisconsin on I-90, the cheese state doesn’t disappoint. There are huge signs beckoning from distant horizons that just say “Cheese.” The name of the business selling the cheese is not important. I guess it’s a little like a leprechaun at the end of the rainbow. Presumably at the base of that sign is a Wisconsiner selling cheese, and a curd is as good as gold here. There also seem to be more Taco John’s in Wisconsin than Minnesota, which most people understand to be far superior to Taco Bell.
I drove 10+ hours, the first long trip I’ve taken with my camper, a 2016 R-pod 179. The living space is roughly 17 feet, so pretty compact, and then the trailer dimensions add another few feet, so it comes out to be slightly over 20 feet. You definitely grip the wheel a little harder, drive a little slower, and pay more attention when you’re pulling a trailer, but it wasn’t bad. Unfortunately, I’m getting about 12 mpg (was hoping for 15), but with a Ford F150 with the smallest engine option, I’ve got about the most efficient pickup you could buy in the year it was built.
That first night I slept at a rest stop in Indiana where there were about 80 semis with drivers doing the same. You can park at a rest stop in Indiana for up to 24 hours. In Minnesota it’s only 4 hours. Minnesota has a saying, Minnesota Nice, which means they’re pleasant on the outside, but inside they want you to go away and leave them alone.
Semi-trucks were everywhere in Indiana, part of the billions of pounds of freight out of the Great Lakes. It’s Amazon and Walmart and a thousand others in the earlier stages of the delivery chain. The semis are everywhere: at rest stops, truck stop gas stations, and lined up bumper-to-bumper on the on-ramps to interstates, getting their mandatory rest time in. As it gets close to midnight it seems like about the only vehicles on the road are semis, one after another. I’m kind of a small version of a semi, but I don’t have anything to sell.
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