Road trip I-90: Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York

Lake Michigan and Lake Erie

13-15 September 2026

It takes as long as it takes. This phrase had an asteroid-sized impact on me when I let it sink in. Things take as long as they take. Modernity has somehow bamboozled me into the delusion that everything can be optimized, made more efficient, happen faster, be more convenient. Apps can summon taxis, bubble tea, Sonicare toothbrush heads, and even a gin martini to my door within the hour. The terrible irony is that, with all that time saved, I still feel as if I have no time. An existential urgency exists in my soul. Time is like a conveyor belt of bins passing me by, and my life’s purpose seemed to be to fill each bin to its max before the next bin arrives.

I am learning a different way.

It was a revelation when I started to make things from scratch. Take for example, soy milk. It takes as long as it takes. I don’t grow the organic soybeans (they are delivered by Amazon within 48 hours of summoning via app). But it takes 8 hours to soak the beans, more time to run 500g of beans through a blender,  more time to methodically squeeze the milk out of the beans in small batches, more time to boil the milk, more time to cool it, etc. I'm not advocating for a misguided return to a premodern era. Modernity is wonderful thing. Every now and again though, the ritual of slowing down is a reminder that life is to be enjoyed. Even the inconvenient, the inefficient, the unoptimized. These things are what make up a life.

Road tripping is like this. I get impatient. There’s got to be a faster way to do this. But the distance between Minneapolis, MN and Bristol, WI is 400 miles… and it takes as long as it takes. The campervan travels at 65 mph, in the right lane. So I might as well settle in for the journey. And this is very good for my brain. It is wonderful to see the bins of time pass me by, with no pressure to fill them at all. In the process, I have learned to allow the joy of the journey. I notice sights, smells, and sounds that I was never aware of before. These things amaze me. Patience has become a virtue.

We managed to survive the freeways of Chicago unscathed. On a Sunday morning before 9am, everyone seemed to be in a frenzy to get to church on time. It was a relief to arrive at the state border. Indiana had the biggest, most impressive state sign on the road trip. 

Then we turned the corner onto federal land and a welcome sign proclaiming “Indiana Dunes National Park.” I meant to just collect my NP stamp and be on my way. But something about this park’s reputation for being the “shittiest park in the National Park system” made me stop for a little longer. I’ll tell you now what I think. It might be the oddest park, the most disjointed park, the least funded park. It might lack the dramatic vistas of parks in the West like Yellowstone or Yosemite. But it is also a very important park. 

If these 15 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline hadn’t been preserved from industrialization in the 1920s, we’d have a line of private homes and cannabis shops today. Instead, this land is still undeveloped and for public enjoyment. The Indiana Dunes State Park is adjacent to the federal lands. Bike paths are being constructed as we visited. We parked the campervan at the NP Visitor Center and biked 16 miles all over, to the state park and the sandy shores of Lake Michigan with a view of the Chicago skyline, through fields of goldenrod and oxeye sunflower, and to ponds where the Great Blue Heron fed.

They say that this national park is within a 3 hour drive of 30 million people. Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and heaven knows what other metropolitan areas with Mad Max highways. I am grateful for what our public lands and national parks preserve. A place filled with goldenrod and pristine asphalt trails, for anyone to enjoy. Indiana Dunes holds its own in our gem of a national park system.

And just like that, after Ohio and a brief wedge of Pennsylvania (the result of an 18th century negotiation for the state of Pennsylvania to have access to Lake Erie), we were in New York. 

We arrived in Ripley, NY just as the sun was setting. I still can't believe that this enormous body of water is a freshwater lake. It smells like the sea. It looks like the sea. It's big like the sea. We waited for the sun to set. It takes as long as it takes.