Romeoville, Illinois

We arrived home last night at around 7:30. Safe and sound. Rich went to open the house and found that John had put the deadbolt on both the front and the back doors. We have never used the deadbolt and don't carry a key. We tried to call John but he was at a beanbag tournament and didn't answer his cell. We finally drove over to Tony's to get some tools and Rich took the molding off the garage door and was able to trip the lock. Thankfully John did not lock the door to the garage.
John called today and informed us that he used the one key for both the regular and the deadbolt lock and lo and behold when Rich tried it it worked. He felt like an idiot. When we had new doors put on Tony made sure both the locks used the same key.
So we got in the house about 8:30. By this time we were ready to be home, not breaking into our own garage. By the time we got everything into the house both of us just collapsed. We did have Dairy Queen for dinner. A final vacation treat. It is now back to the fruit and yogurt.
I know that a lot of people think that a driving vacation is really boring and believe me, parts of it are. But there are so many beautiful, incredible and amazing things to see it is worth a little boredom. We saw all the lush greens and wildflowers in the areas that get ample amounts of rain, the browns and yellows in the areas that do not, and the orange and black of the construction that is across the land.
We saw everything from sculptures on the side of the road, to a forest fire, to a camper convention of Airstreams in Gillette Wyoming, to herds of cows, horses, sheep, goats, llamas and buffalos. We saw many, many interesting looking people. We saw towns that were alive and thriving and ones that were dead or dying. We talked to many nice people and even found a couple from Braidwood. The woman used to work in Romeoville. It is truly a small world. It is encouraging to see all the families that are going to see the many landmarks of this country.
The only really sad thing is to see all the homeless people there are looking for help. Men, women and even a family that was trying to raise money to keep from being evicted. They are on every street corner and even in the rest ares. We saw one young man looking for a ride walking with his dog with all his belongings. Just about broke my heart.
We will probably not do another long trip like this. We have decided to cut them down to a couple of weeks. Rich did all the driving and we drove over 7000 miles. I have just turned into a nervous, namby-pamby driver. The high speeds, the mountains and all the semi's just scare me. I like driving around my own little neck of the woods.
We have had a wonderful time and I would recommend this kind of a trip to anyone that can do it.
I will finish with a sign that we saw outside a bar and grill that said "the liver is evil, it must be punished". There is a lot of humor out there also.