That morning, we left for Chicago, about a 1-hour drive from Indiana Dunes State Park. We had time-sensitive tickets to another Frank Lloyd Wright wonder, the Robie House (See also our Falling Water Fiasco here.) This time we left 3 times as much time to get there as we thought we needed in order to be on time, and were still only about 20 minutes early…gotta love van travel and city parking.

Kalamazoo, MI will always have a special place in my heart, not only because it is the childhood home of my favorite New York Yankee, Derek Jeter, but also because of the ballin Walmart wifi we were able to bum in the parking lot as we nestled in for another night of reality TV in the van.

We left the safety of our friend’s front yard in Columbus, Ohio for the open road of Michigan.  Goal? To touch the Great Lakes…

Westward Ho!...To Ohio we go!...but wait, why are we in West Virginia?

After Falling Water it was starting to get dark and we faced the ever daunting task of figuring out where to sleep.  Our black and grey tanks needed to be dumped soon and we were running low on propane so we found Mountain Pines Campground in Champion, PA. 

We were luckily able to drive the bruised and battered “Comet the Travato” back to Humz’s parent’s house in central New Jersey, only about a 170 mile drive from where we got hit, but with inoperable rear doors.  Both doors were crushed in so we didn’t know if we could shut them again if we tried to open them.  Luckily the crash damage was just low enough that it didn’t wreck our bike that was on the bike rack during the rear-ending, although we did need a new bike rack.

We secured us an interior spot for a 3 day stay at Mt. Desert Narrows Camping Resort, about a 20 minute drive from downtown Bar Harbor, and one of the only close campgrounds available.  The campground was fairly empty and although...