We had a nice quiet nice parked outside the visitor centre michigan city. I admit I was a little worried about the close proximity to Chicago, but apparently its a safe town. We’d met a few people who have moved here from Chicago to escape the violence there. So we felt quite safe parked up overnight, but driving out today was a different story. More about that later.

This morning we explored the Indiana dunes national park. It’s an interesting one as it’s not a contiguous area, having industrial parts in amongst it. But they created the national park to protect it from future development.

Indiana dunes has a whole lot of white sandy beaches on the edge of Lake Michigan, and it really is like being at the beach. We could see the Chicago skyline in the haze in the distance.

There’s a big sand dune which is on the move, trampling big trees in its path, moving 4feet a year.

There were also some futuristic houses built in the 1930s which had been placed there from a trade fair in Chicago. The houses were ahead of their time with dishwashers, automatic garage doors and one was solar heated. They thought in the future everyone would have their own plane, and one house had its own hangar. It’s crazy considering most people didn’t even have cars back then.

Around 2pm we continued on, and found ourselves in the slums of south Chicago. I really didn’t feel safe so we decided to swallow our pride and drive on freeways, at least until we left Chicago behind.

So the rest of the day was spent on boring motorway driving.

Tonight we’re camping at the largest truck stop in the world! And it’s free! And there’s a cool museum we will explo

Since we left our housesit we haven’t paid for camping so we’re slowly recouping our costs of solar panels and batteries. As well as that, it’s just so convenient to stop at these free places without needing electricity. So far, so good.