Midwest Road Trip
Part 7
Wednesday, November 8 was primarily a travel day, as we began the roughly 700-mile journey home. Chicago had been fun, but the real world back home was calling. At the end of this day, we would find ourselves at a Hampton Inn just outside Cleveland, where I had booked a suite.
But first, we had to pack everything up and load it all into the HR-V.
The luggage cart, stacked to the top. We did not travel light on this trip. And we piled it all into the back of the HR-V.
Then with everything loaded into the car, and our having checked out of our room, we got started. However, we didn’t get too far before we made a stop, as Elyse had found an interesting set of elevators about two blocks away, at Sherman Garden Apartments. This was cooperative housing, where, rather than renting a unit from a landlord like traditional apartments, or buying your unit outright as with a condominium, you instead purchase a share in the business entity that owns the building. Therefore, while you don’t directly own your specific unit, you have an ownership stake in the property as a whole, along with everyone else that you share the building with.
Either way, though, the buildings were well maintained, though the elevators were tiny. I couldn’t imagine moving in or out of these buildings with those tiny elevators that were clearly built before modern accessibility standards. If you wanted to bring a couch in, I imagine that you had to take it up the stairs, because there is no way that it would ever fit in the elevator. Similarly, I suspect that despite the elevator, these buildings are not wheelchair accessible, because the elevators are not large enough to admit a wheelchair.
Builder’s plate on one of the elevators at Sherman Garden.
Button panel and inspection certificate on one of the elevators.
Letter from the city of Evanston permitting a variance to the pit ladder at Sherman Garden.
Traveling downward past the fourth floor on one of the elevators.
Builder’s plate and inspection certificate for the elevator at a different building at Sherman Garden.
Remote fire annunciator. Note that the “Controls Enabled” light is illuminated. Tempting, but we already had no business being here, so conducting our own fire drill was a definite no.
The pull stations were the Edwards 278 model, with Kidde branding. The notification appliances, meanwhile, were Edwards Genesis LED.
Fire alarm panel in the basement at Sherman Garden.
Memo about the cats that live around Sherman Garden, used for vermin control purposes.
Elyse and I casually looked online at how much it cost to buy into the co-op, with the thought that we ought to come out to Chicago a lot more often, and wouldn’t it be nice to have a place of our own while we were out there, near to family. As it turned out, while the units there were pretty reasonably priced, the cooperative’s rules and fees did the idea in, as the fees are where they get you, plus in order to be eligible to be an owner there, you had to live there full-time, and I wasn’t about to move out to the Chicagoland area. Ah, well.
Altogether, we spent about an hour there, which was longer than I had intended, but it felt like time well spent. Pacing would be an issue on the return trip in general, as we didn’t strike a great balance between doing everything that we wanted to do and making good time traveling. I also didn’t want to do most of the long stretches in the car at night, because I didn’t want to be bored out of my mind with nothing to look at other than the long road ahead and start to suffer from fatigue.
Leaving the apartments, we briefly stopped in at a 7-Eleven store nearby, and then we started driving through downtown Evanston. Surprisingly, in all of my visits to the area, I had never been through here, and I was kind of kicking myself for not checking it out in more detail earlier on this trip. I suppose that this is something for next time. We did, however, stop at a small newsstand with an interesting sign at the intersection of Main Street and Chicago Avenue. We didn’t go in, though, as I just wanted to photograph the sign and then keep it moving.
Sign for Chicago-Main Newsstand. Gotta love a vintage neon sign.
Finishing there, we entered the Chicago city limits for the last time on this trip. We made a stop at a Target store in Rogers Park for a quick errand, and then continued on our way. Rather than taking the freeway as we did on the way in, this time, we took Lake Shore Drive down, with the idea of having a more scenic ride. That was an enjoyable ride, and much more pleasant than the freeways that we took on the way in.
That ride landed us in Chicago’s South Side. We were all struck by how different that part of the city was compared to the parts that we had been familiar with up to that point. If it tells you anything, the three of us were the only white people that we saw the entire time that we were in the South Side. Due to time considerations, we continued straight through without stopping.
We didn’t stop again until we were out of Chicago, and therefore out of Illinois. One of the stops that we had planned for the return trip was Gary, Indiana. In Gary, we stopped by the train station, and Elyse and Kyle immediately got on a local transit bus and went for a ride. Me, I found a place to park, and went up around the train station with the drone. I did a few different flights from various locations in what I believe was the downtown area.
Aerial view of Gary, more or less directly above my launch point, looking down I-90 in the eastbound direction.
Industrial area north of I-90.
Central business district in Gary.
The Justice Robert D. Rucker Superior Courthouse.
A very brightly painted parking garage sits abandoned across Washington Street from the courthouse.
Bringing the drone in for a landing after depleting the first battery. That’s what I call an accurate landing, as I set it down right on the edge of the moon roof.
Abandoned house at 420 Adams Street.
The Genesis Convention Center. I was both surprised and not surprised to see that this facility was abandoned.
Gary, Indiana’s city hall, architecturally similar to and located directly across the street from the courthouse.
Finishing with the drone, I called Elyse to find out where they were. They were at a Menards store on the other side of Gary. So I headed over. I also learned that the buses in Gary were in very rough shape, but they still ran.
Drone photos of the Menards in Gary.
Former Ultra Foods store located next to Menards. According to an article, this location closed in 2017, and it has apparently been vacant ever since. Prior to Ultra Foods, this building housed a Pay Low grocery store.
After landing the drone, I did a quick loop around the parking lot in order to get some conventional shots of the shopping center.
After I finished photographing the Menards shopping center, I went inside. It was clear that this was a much older facility than the one in Niles, but it had everything that one would expect – just laid out differently.
Finishing at Menards, we went over to a nearby GoLo gas station to fill up and get some drinks.
Sign at the gas station about restroom usage. I found that a bit off-putting, since, after all, we’re not in school anymore. However, no one stopped us or otherwise bothered us when we helped ourselves to the restroom.
And then we were off. Gary took much longer than I had intended, but dealing with Elyse and Kyle can be like herding cats, especially when there is transit involved. I intended for the Gary stop to be about an hour. We took more than double that amount of time.
Leaving Gary, we crossed back into Eastern time, and thus gave back the hour that we had gained on the outbound trip. So now, rather than being the 4:00 hour, it was after 5:00, and thus it was getting late. Our next stop was in Elkhart, which is a town that I was familiar with from my past travels on the Capitol Limited. There, we made a restroom stop at a gas station, and then immediately went to photograph a vintage sign.
The sign in front of the Diplomat Motel in Elkhart.
While everyone got their photos of the sign, Elyse and Kyle took nowhere near as much time with it as I did, so they walked over to a nearby Martin’s grocery store. When I was finished, I joined them there.
The front of Martin’s in Elkhart. This Martin’s is completely unrelated to the Martin’s stores that are found in Virginia and Maryland. Those Martin’s stores are part of Giant-Carlisle, while these are owned by SpartanNash.
We were looking for food, and we found some there, as I bought some barbecue and some coleslaw. Elyse and Kyle also bought some stuff as well. However, we quickly made an executive decision: this food would be dinner, later on, when we got to the hotel at the end of the day. In the meantime, we would hit up a restaurant in Elkhart for some right-now food.
Our first thought for food was Qdoba. However, when we went in there, they turned us and another party away because they had no rice ready, as they apparently couldn’t serve anything because all of their menu items required rice. As we left there, I saw the manager chewing out the two employees over the rice issue. I imagine that she found that situation just as unacceptable as we did, but at the same time, not having enough rice ready ultimately falls back on her, and therefore it is ultimately her fault, since she’s the one who was responsible for managing the other employees working in the place, and failed to ensure that her employees made enough rice to service the customers.
We ended up going to a McAlister’s Deli for dinner, which worked out pretty well. It cost me more than Qdoba would have cost, but everybody ate and enjoyed.
At this point, it was 8:30 PM, and we were doing what I had hoped to avoid: long stretches of rural highway at night. That led to the usual argument: make conversation with me or I’m turning on a podcast so that I stay engaged. Elyse wanted neither, as she wanted quiet time. That wasn’t an option as far as I was concerned, and so that became a point of contention, as she claimed that wasn’t her problem. I would argue that yes, it was, because I was the only driver, and if I got sleepy behind the wheel and we ended up careening off the road into a ditch, that would affect her just as much as anyone else. In any case, we ended up driving about two hours and 124 miles to our next stop, which was the Meijer store in Maumee, Ohio.
Welcome to Meijer.
This was where we finally gave a Meijer a proper visit. We visited the location in Ann Arbor on the way out to Chicago, but that was a bit rushed, as we were in search of food at the time. However, all the same, I still wanted to be somewhat quick about it and not dawdle, because we still had around 100 miles to go, and it was already after 10:00.
The main aisle alongside the grocery area.
Produce department.
Kids’ clothing department.
Domestics department, with pillows and mattress toppers.
Shoe department.
The main aisle along the front of the store.
We finished up at Meijer around 11:00, which was later than I wanted, but such is what happens when you’re trying to herd cats. Once we got back to the car, I remotely checked into our hotel, the Hampton Inn Cleveland/Independence, which was located just south of Cleveland. That meant that when we got to our hotel, we could go right in, since everything was done.
Like most of the night driving that we did, the drive out was pretty dull, driving through the Midwest in the dark and all. I understand and appreciate the way that my sister has described Ohio in the past, characterizing it as a big, flat state. I was delighted when we finally got to Cleveland, because it was something to look at besides flat land.
We arrived at the hotel at 12:30 AM, and I was greeted by criticism about the hotel’s location from Elyse, who complained that it was too far from a bus stop. Considering that we would be there for less than twelve hours, i.e. just long enough to sleep, have breakfast, and then get moving again, I didn’t want to hear it. Besides, it really didn’t matter all that much, since we were all going into Cleveland in the morning, presumably in the HR-V.
When I went to park the car, I noticed that some bricks were missing from a corner of the hotel. I suspect that a car had hit it, but I never asked about it, so I don’t know for sure.
Soon enough, we got settled in the room, and we ate the food from Martin’s that we had bought back in Elkhart. It was a good thing that we had bought food there, because it was really good, and after so much driving, it really hit the spot.