Close, but yet so far…

When you start the morning with the GPS telling you HOME is only 11 hours away, you might think you’re going to get home early (Derek).

But when you have to stop for fuel every 2hrs or so, and then you also have to fuel your bodies…the reality is you’re much further away than you might think.

Oh, and there’s the “loss” of an hour due to time zones…

But the drive is interesting & beautiful…

So we still ended up driving thru Illinois & Indiana 😂 Southern Indiana is actually quite lovely…hilly & wooded like home💗

And because Derek is an avid Christmas movie fan, we had to stop in Santa Claus, IN 🎅😂

Great little KOA campground we stayed at last night in Grayville, Ill…2 miles from the Indiana state line.🤠🐎🏕

Louisville, KY…one of several cities we drove thru to avoid Chicago 😂🤦‍♀️🤦🏻‍♂️

Only a few horse farms, we’re too far north 🙃

On the Kentucky / West Virginia border. We saw SO MANY oil refineries on this trip!! This is only about half of this one…the ones out West were 3-4 times this size, at least 😳

I69 from the border all the way to I79 in Charleston WV was like non-stop city & traffic 🙄 an hour in & we finally hit the “wild & wonderful” we remembered 😂