I left Des Moines earlier than I might have otherwise. Because of the spare tire on my roof, I wasn’t able to fit into the hotel’s low-clearance garage. The city of Des Moines fortunately offered free overnight street parking throughout the downtown core, but the meters turned on at 9 am and I needed to be out by then. The hotel was surprisingly busy – I would’ve considered it busy even in non-COVID times. The news said Iowa was becoming a new hotspot for the virus, so I didn’t resent having to skip town early.
Iowa is very roughly rectangular and Des Moines sits pretty nearly in its center, offset slightly towards the southwest. The western part of the state, stretching from the Missouri River to Des Moines, is generally very similar to the eastern portion between the capital and the Mississippi River. Thus, my morning passed just as the previous afternoon had. The Des Moines skyline quickly disappeared from view and I was back on the plains. I passed wind turbines as I was passed by cars bearing west coast license plates and stuffed to the roof with Uhaul boxes and suitcases. The great crossing.
Heading towards Walcott, billboards advertised the World’s Largest Truck Stop. My love of superlatives pressured me to stop, but I knew there was nothing special I would want to do or see in a giant truck stop and continued on. As Iowa ran out and I approached the Quad Cities region that lines the Mississippi, several airplanes were in a holding pattern waiting for their turn to land. The Quad Cities airport is the busiest non-Chicago airport in Illinois. It serves the five cities that, rather unmathematically, comprise the Quad Cities – Davenport and Bettendorf on the Iowa riverbank, Moline, East Moline, and Rock Island on the Illinois side. I passed under a freight train groaning across an overpass, shuddering to think of just how much weight the overpass supports were being asked to hold.
Finally, the grand Mississippi. Return trips to the East Coast never feel real until the Mississippi is in the rearview mirror. The river has always represented a nearly mythical divide in my mind between West and East, between adventure and the quotidian. As soon as my tires hit Illinois, the quality of the pavement changed. What had previously been smooth sailing now felt like trying to sprint through a minefield of potholes.
A breeze was blowing across western Illinois, and the fields surrounding the highway were rippling with light. As the breeze brushed the tops of the crops and the grass, the sunlight hit them differently, creating waves of light green rolling through darker greens. I left the highway in Peru to get coffee. While waiting in the drive-thru line at Starbucks, I realized this was the first time in my life I would order drive-thru. On roadtrips, I had always parked and gone inside to order, eager to stretch my legs and get out of the car for a few minutes. The Peru Starbucks was in a standalone building in the parking lot of a strip mall. The mall was a classic coexistence of a nail salon, a Petsmart, a wireless store, and the dubiously named Cash Store.
I left the highway again a few miles later at North Utica, planning to stop off in Starved Rock State Park. On the road between the interstate and downtown, a yardsign declared, “Farm land not frack sand!” Mill Street, the heart of the town’s business district, had been closed down to traffic and was a sea of outdoor tables and umbrellas. South of downtown, a strip mall full of kitschy cafes and bakeries attempted to lure in tourists. Architecturally similar to a Hollywood representation of a Wild West frontier town, the strip mall had been painted with bright, pastel pinks, blues, greens, and purples. At the far end, a statue of Bigfoot had been painted purple from head to toe. After crossing the Illinois River, I turned off into the state park. There were several other cars ahead of me and behind me and I began to worry about how busy the park would be, although the fact that it was mid-week gave me some hope. When I pulled into the parking lot, however, I immediately knew I wouldn’t be staying. Hundreds and hundreds of cars crowded into the lot. I would be hard pressed to find a parking spot, let alone to hike undisturbed. I added the park to my mental list of places to visit on a post-COVID roadtrip and turned around without as much as stopping car.
On the way in towards Chicago, I pulled off to use the bathroom. In the rest stop parking lot, an ambulance was being winched up onto a flatbed tow truck. Despite their masks covering most of their faces, I could tell the now-stranded paramedics were not happy. Near Joliet, someone had stuck red cups into the chain-link fence of an overpass: “WE LOVE U NATE.” A truck outfitted with high-visibility signs warning of its wide load was carrying absolutely massive tires whose diameter spanned more than a full 12’ highway lane. A small motorboat had been abandoned in the breakdown lane. A crash test dummy’s head had been impaled on a pike, painted with fake blood, and mounted on the boat’s bow, perhaps an unintelligible warning to passing drivers.
The highway widened to six lanes in each direction and the flow of traffic picked up. In my mirrors, a cavalry of trucks loomed behind me. This must be how pawns feel at the start of a chess match. I entered Indiana, and a little ways past Gary, my GPS reminded me just how exciting this drive was: “Continue on I-80 East for 277 miles.”
Road trains, trucks carrying three trailers linked end-to-end like segments of some strange worm, were much more prevalent on the Indiana Turnpike than anywhere else I had been this trip. The triple-trailers continued onto the Ohio Turnpike. At the state line were two signs: “Welcome to Ohio” and “Drug traffickers go to prison.” Trees lined the highway and provided greenery but prevented the landscape from being seen. On a bridge over the Maumee River, the water broke through the trees and opened up a view of the Toledo skyline. Near Cleveland, a weak fog settled over the road. Driving through it misted up my windshield. Finally, long after the night had settled in, I made it to a rest area in Mentor. Not long after pulling in for the night, the fog gave way to torrential rain. What I thought were trucks flashing their high beams turned out to be lightning. Some of the subsequent thunderclaps were aggressive, others were just a low rumble that practically melted into the sound of the idling trucks.
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