Days 32 & 33: Madison, WI -> Darien Center, NY (again!)

- Anna and Jono sleeping in JJ's poptop

We wound up seeing fire works after all! It just so happened Madison, Wisconsin held their fireworks on July 5th, over lake Mendota, and we got there just in time to see the music-choreographed display. We stayed the night at the Token Creek Park campground so that we could wake up and go back into the city for breakfast at Monte’s Blue Plate Diner (with Cristina in mind). Then we drove the 7 hours to Ann Arbor, Michigan, through the anxiety-inducing, truck-filled highways of Chicago. Man do we miss driving the back roads of Iowa. We wound up at a primitive campsite on Green Lake in the Waterloo Recreation Area just outside of Ann Arbor after an evening of severe thunderstorms. We were curled up in JJ’s poptop listening to the threatening sounds of thunder for what seemed like eternity. At one point a bolt a lightening struck what must have been 100 yards away and scared the CRAP out of both of us. Thankfully, we survived to tell the story. We spend a few hours in Ann Arbor this morning, paying tribute to Stephy’s alma matter, and now we’re heading back to NY through Canada, as to spice things up a bit.

From the experiences we’ve had throughout our travels, here are some suggestions:

-Madison, Wisconsin: get some street signs
-Canadians: be less helpful (let us be lost for 5 minutes, please!)
-Americans: be more helpful (don’t be so self-absorbed, strangers sometimes need help!
-Michigan, Nebraska and South Dakota: lower your campsite costs, who in their right mind is going to buy an annual pass to park their motor vehicle in a state they’ll never come back to?
-Utah: put more gas stations in your desert, or post more than one sign in the whole state about where they’re located
-States that have time zone changes: put up some frickin signs!
-George W Bush: quit now so that others can experience the land we just did
-The West: get some new scenery, cattle and rolling fields get old
-California: get over yourself, you’re big but you’re not all beautiful (some of the worst smells we’ve smelt were on highway 5 in southern Cali, thanks to the beef industry)
-Midwest: need we say more
-Houghton Mifflen and The John Merck Fund: grant Jonathan Baker and Anna Linakis at least 8 weeks of vacation for next summer
-Niagara falls: all you are is just another leaky faucet
-Rural America: get some quality produce (organic?)
-McDonals's: get a veggie burger
-Dave Ambrose: get a job
-New England: you’re nearly perfect, all you need is some drive-in movies, a couple snow-capped 10,000 footers, a few more farms, some cowboys, a coastal rainforest, some more good surf, and a chill-pill