Meteor Shower

It turns out that whether by bike or car, Andrew and I have a near-pathological desire to squeeze every bit of fun out of a trip we can. One wild and precious vacation and all.

So instead of getting a good night's sleep and leaving at 4am the next day, an already ambitious plan), I hustled after work to finish packing, load the car, and get the hell out of Chicago so we could experience the Perseids meteor shower on a historic year - when it aligned with a new moon on a dark night!

Even though it was 8:30pm on a Wednesday, we immediately hit Chicago traffic. That's ok, we thought, it's going to be worth it when the sky rains shooting stars. We waved to Sonja at the White Sox game as we passed Comiskey Park and I fell asleep as Andrew crawled to Indiana for cheap gas, one of the state's few redeeming qualities right now. I woke up when the car stopped, in complete darkness.

"Where are we?" I mumbled as I tried to wake up and orient myself.
"A gas station?"

I looked out the window. Pitch black except for some electricians pulling cable across the street with some work lights. Why did THAT have to be my first vacation sight??

As my eyes adjusted, I saw cars and trucks parked haphazardly around, and we were in what looked like a dark abandoned gas station. It was so quiet. I remembered that just 24 hours ago tornados had ripped through the area and left it without power. We drove slowly through the dark and back onto the highway. It was an eerie experience.

We found a Speedway with the lights on down the road and I fell back asleep, hoping to be able to help drive later that night.

When I woke up again, we were, once again, in total darkness. Andrew told me we were in a natural area to see the stars, but the directions hadn't led him to a parking area, just the middle of a road. It was dark and empty, and besides the fact that there was nowhere to pull over it seemed like a great stargazing area. Eventually he pulled into a parking area. We got out and were greeted by the local mosquitoes. We tried to see the sky but there were a lot of trees in the way and the air was thick with fog, which got thicker the longer we waited. It was also past 2am and we were both fighting sleep. We tried walking out to what looked like a clearing but it was dark and hard to see and almost walked straight into the aptly named Mud Lake.

Well, seeing the Perseids was a bust. At least we got a few hours of driving in and didn't have to start in Chicago the next morning. We went to sleep in the humid car with the peaceful thought that we were ahead of "schedule." We probably could have seen the meteors really well in that dark Indiana gas station, but you live you learn.Read more